Bostrom and Savulescu Issue “Human Enhancement” Collection

We are pleased to announce the release of “Human Enhancement”, edited by IEET Chair Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, with contributions from many important leaders in bioethics, including Arthur Caplan and Peter Singer.

Edited by Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom

  ISBN: 978-0-19-929972-0

  Publisher: Oxford University Press (22 January 2009)

         
• Human enhancement is now one of the biggest dilemmas facing modern science
         
• The latest developments in this highly controversial debate
         
• New essays from some of the world’s leading ethicists, including Peter Singer
         
• Truly international perspectives, from North America, Europe, Japan, and Australasia
         
• Discusses such contentious issues as selection of children and use of drugs in sport
         

To what extent should we use technology to try to make better human beings? Because of the remarkable advances in biomedical science, we must now find an answer to this question.

Human enhancement aims to increase human capacities above normal levels. Many forms of human enhancement are already in use. Many students and academics take cognition enhancing drugs to get a competitive edge. Some top athletes boost their performance with legal and illegal substances. Many an office worker begins each day with a dose of caffeine. This is only the beginning. As science and technology advance further, it will become increasingly possible to enhance basic human capacities to increase or modulate cognition, mood, personality, and physical performance, and to control the biological processes underlying normal aging. Some have suggested that such advances would take us beyond the bounds of human nature.

These trends, and these dramatic prospects, raise profound ethical questions. They have generated intense public debate and have become a central topic of discussion within practical ethics. Should we side with bioconservatives, and forgo the use of any biomedical interventions aimed at enhancing human capacities? Should we side with transhumanists and embrace the new opportunities? Or should we perhaps plot some middle course?

Human Enhancement presents the latest moves in this crucial debate: original contributions from many of the world’s leading ethicists and moral thinkers, representing a wide range of perspectives, advocates and sceptics, enthusiasts and moderates. These are the arguments that will determine how humanity develops in the near future.

Contents
           
              Introduction: Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate - Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu
             
              Part I - Human Enhancement in General

           

1. Can anyone really be talking about ethically modifying human nature?                                     

Norman Daniels
                         

2. "Alter-ing" Human Nature? Misplaced Essentialism in Science Policy            

Eric Jeungst
                         

3. Should We Improve Human Nature? An Interrogation from an Asian Perspective                          

Ryuichi Ida
                         

4. The Case Against Perfection: What’s wrong with designer children, bionic athletes, and genetic engineering                          

Michael Sandel
                         

5. What Is And Is Not Wrong With Enhancement?                         

Frances Kamm
                         

6. Enhancements Are A Moral Obligation                          

John Harris
                         

7. Playing God                          

C.A.J. Coady
                         

8. Toward a More Fruitful Debate about Enhancement                          

Erik Parens
                         

9. Good, Better, or Best?                         

Arthur L. Caplan
                         

10. The Human Prejudice and the Moral Status of Enhanced Beings: What Do We Owe the Gods?                         

Julian Savulescu                        

           

11. Is Selection of Children Wrong?                       

Dan W. Brock
                       

12. Parental Choice and Human Improvement                        

Peter Singer
                       

13. Reasons Against the Selection of Life: From Japan’s Experience of Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis                        

Susumu Shimazono
                       

14. Medical Enhancement and the Ethos of Elite Sport - Torbjörn Tännsjö
                       

15. Life Enhancement Technologies And the Significance of Social Category Membership                        

Christine Overall
                       

16. Paternalism in the Age of Cognitive Enhancement: Do Civil Liberties Presuppose Roughly Equal Mental Ability?                       

Daniel Wikler
                       

17. Enhancing Our Truth Orientation                        

Robin Hanson                                        

           

18. The Wisdom of Nature: An Evolutionary Heuristic for Human Enhancement                        

Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg

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