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August 31, 2006
In the emerging partnership between bio medicine and the biotechnology in the 21st century we sense something unusual and worrisome. The emerging biotech century dramatically ups the ante of biomedical interventions because it so thoroughly increases biomedicine’s reach into the fabric of our daily lives.
As can seen in this post some use terms like 'cyborg' or 'posthuman' to descrbe this concern,whilst others use the bioethics terminology of enhancement technologies. The phrase 'enhancement technologies' entered the bioethics literature in the 1980s with the advent of new gene therapies. Bioethicists worried that the potential for human genetic treatment would also bring the peril of new eugenic manipulation. They attempted to distinquish the good from the bad by drawing a bright line distinction between treatment and enhancement--with treatment being the good genetic manipulation and enhancement the bad genetic manipulation.
Carl Elliott argues in his Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream that the treatment-enhancement distinction does not hold up all that well.
The new biotechnologies prove too slippery for the rigid binary treatment or therapy-enhancement distinction and With the advent of Prozac, Ritalin, Viagra, Propecia (for baldness), Protropin (growth hormone), Botox, aging science, sex-reassignment surgery, cochlear implants, and the explosion of cosmetic surgeries the priorities of the treatment-enhancement distinction can often flip. Enhancement can become more desirable and more valuable than treatment. Plus, the treatment-enhancement distinction can blur beyond recognition when the same technology is used as either a treatment or an enhancement.
As Marilyn Gardner says in a review of Elliot's book:
Physical transformation represents only part of the burgeoning makeover industry. Those seeking self-improvement can now alter their emotions and behavior as well, even if no "before" and "after" photos can quite register the change. Feeling shy? Just take Paxil. Depressed? No problem - pop a Valium. Need calming? Reach for Ritalin. Want greater sexual prowess? Try Viagra. For every "social phobia" that ails you, there's a pill designed to increase confidence and self-assurance. These "enhancement technologies," as Carl Elliott calls them in his engaging and provocative book, "Better Than Well," are closely connected to questions of identity - questions, he says, that involve "finding the self, changing the self, improving the self, or betraying the self."
Roger Muldar in this review says that Elliott's:
...central argument is that American culture sees the power of individual authenticity as the moral ideal. Within this, conscience is incorporated as the moral guide and the concept of self-fulfilment is seen as a democratic right to pursue ones own vision of the "good life". The problem with this vision is that the fulfilment is largely self reverential and therefore there are constant doubts over whether this fulfilment is adequate. The lack of any fixed or agreed upon success or failure imparts a sense of unease; we are constantly wondering whether we could be better---i.e. could be more fulfilled. This unease leads to the increasing use of enhancement techniques to ensure that we are near the top in being self fulfilled or at least reasonably competitive. The recurring problem is that we can never be sure; there is no way of validating our happiness in relation to others' happiness.
Therapy transforms into enhancement. As this reviewer notes by 'simultaneously concentrating on enhancement technologies and American cultural identifications, Elliott makes it clear that medical enhancement technologies have fully inserted themselves into American identity dynamics and the circuits of American popular culture.'
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Gary,This essay by my favourite philosopher gives a unique perspective on health & healing.
www.aboutadidam.org/readings/edible_deity/index.html