title: Is human enhancement also a personal matter?
abstract: Emerging technologies are increasingly used in an attempt to "enhance the human body and/or mind" beyond the contemporary standards that characterize human beings. Yet, such standards are deeply controversial and it is not an easy task to determine whether the application of a given technology to an individual and its outcome can be defined as a human enhancement or not. Despite much debate on its potential or actual ethical and social impacts, human enhancement is not subject to any consensual definition. This paper proposes a timely and much needed examination of the various definitions found in the literature. We classify these definitions into four main categories: the implicit approach, the therapy-enhancement distinction, the improvement of general human capacities and the increase of well-being. After commenting on these different approaches and their limitations, we propose a definition of human enhancement that focuses on individual perceptions. While acknowledging that a definition that mainly depends on personal and subjective individual perceptions raises many challenges, we suggest that a comprehensive approach to define human enhancement could constitute a useful premise to appropriately address the complexity of the ethical and social issues it generates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Bioethics Programs, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada. vincent.menuz@umontreal.ca
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Menuz
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hurlimann
authors.forename: Béatrice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Godard
mesh_terms: D024803:Biomedical Enhancement / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D010465:Perception; D012945:Social Values; D009626:Terminology as Topic