Human Enhancement, Objective Enhancement and Discriminatory Enhancement: From Eugenics to Social Darwinism?

Abstract

Biomedical technology, especially genetics, will predictably be used for treatments that far from being therapeutic would be aimed to enhance human capabilities or abilities. These practices revive in a certain way the idea of eugenics, but certain authors have denied the accuracy  of using against  them the traditional  reasons  and preventions  against  historical eugenics.  Moreover,  they defend  what is called  “liberal  eugenics”:  being those practices freed from state reliance they would become morally justif ied or even morally obligatory when they can be used for the benef it of our future children. This article defends that even if charges  against  historical  eugenics  are not in general  applicable  here,  these  practices and  theories  present  several  problems.  It  is  discussed  what  an  “enhance”  could  be  and to  what extent to enhance  can be inacceptable  from a moral perspective  even in cases of objective improvement. This could be the case of what it is named here as discriminatory enhancement. Finally, it is suggested that the fact that so many enhancements provide only positional improvements, invites to consider these practices to be closer to Social Darwinism than to eugenics.