I see that in the US the President’s Council on Bioethics has been having an ongoing inquiry/conversation into biotechnology that resulted in a report entitled "Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness."

The conversation is an important one as it is about advances in genetics, drug discovery, and regenerative medicine promise cures for dreaded diseases and relief for terrible suffering. Advances in neural science and psychopharmacology promise better treatments for the mentally ill. Techniques of assisted reproduction have already allowed for over one million infertile couples to have their own children. Without such advances, past, present, and future, many of us would lead diminished lives or not be here at all. These advances facilitate the pursuit of happiness, since biotechnology is a form of human empowerment that takes us beyond nature's givens as is. This raises the issue of willful control or mastery and control.

This biotechnology raises tough questions about our ethical ends of the good life--living well, living a flourishing life -- life and the benefits and harms of pursuing our ends, even our worthy ends, by the new biotechnologies. In the case of the new technologies employed in conventional medicine, the answers about ends are quite clear. We want to heal the sick. We want to relieve the suffering, and our new abilities might let us do so more effectively.Some crucial questions of means remain, but we basically agree about the ends.

But the same technologies will have the power to reach far beyond the traditional domain of medicine and allow us perhaps to alter or improve our bodies and minds for ends other than a restoration of health.To what ends beyond therapy should we put these technologies? And what might be the consequences of pursuing those ends using our new biotechnical powers?

A frequently suggested basis for distinguishing between proper and improper uses of these new technologies is the distinction between those uses of new biomedical technologies that aim at therapy and those that aim at non-therapeutic enhancement. A therapy, roughly defined, is a treatment for a disorder or deficiency, which aims to bring an unhealthy person to health. An enhancement is an improvement or extension of some characteristic, capacity, or activity.