140.2 Human enhancement and social justice: Is there a right to not enhance?

Wednesday, August 1, 2012: 12:45 PM
Faculty of Economics, TBA
Oral Presentation
Antonio MATURO , Sociology, Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Human enhancement (HE) might be defined as any activity which, through medical technology, increase one or more of the following dimension: psychological wellness; cognitive and physical performance, life-extension. While medicalization is concerned with (new) pathologies and therapy, HE is based on the optimization of normal conditions. The main debates on HE and social justice are focused on the permissibility to enhance and the fairness in the distribution of HE. That is: If  HE would be legal how could society grant access to the biomedical devices in an era of rationing? Will human enhancement increase social inequalities? (as according to the innovation theory the better off will always have a social advantage)

Very few studies on HE deals with the enhancement of mood, perhaps because mood-brighter and cosmetic psychopharmacology need a certain degree of pathologization of a certain condition in order to be used.  In the case of emotional wellbeing it seems that HE, in some respects, could take the place of social policy. A bright mood allows us to cope with difficult situations on job, college and in the family. In this context, how can people resist HE? Is there a right to not enhance?

I argue that that in order to be enhanced, human conditions will be increasingly medically framed as pathological. Human emotions are increasingly transformed (by ads) in illnesses (subjective perception of pain) and then in diseases (by science). By this bio-strategy people will increasingly be stimulated to take pharmaceuticals in order to be more functional at the job market or more integrated in the classroom. Therefore, people have the right to not enhance, but the duty to restore their health. The problem is that under two different labels (enhancement and treatment), in different periods of time, we could have the same pharmaceutical action.