ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines whether “enhancement” is objectionable and should be banned. Most people understand human enhancement to be the enhancement of some kind of function within the normal range. Typically, a distinction is drawn between disease and health, and between treatment and enhancement. People say that enhancement has health risks and is worrying in particular because it trades health for non-health-related benefits. The philosopher Michael Sandel worries that a society in which enhancement was widely available would undermine solidarity. Enhancement technologies are part of the same pattern – of trying to enable society to flourish and to live good lives. People should be free to choose whatever they consider to be an enhancement for themselves, as long as they bear the costs and did not harm others. This is in line with the liberty principle of the nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill.
