Pharmacologic Enhancement of the Human Condition: Possibilities and Perils

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the technical, safety and bioethical issues associated with human pharmacologic enhancement. Although neuroscientific advances are now providing valuable treatments for patients with neurological diseases, many of these treatments may also be applied to “normal” individuals free of disease as a means of achieving “quality of life” improvements, an enterprise sometimes called “cosmetic neurology”. Although such enhancements might variously make one happier, more serene, more intelligent, better at mental arithmetic, more personable, and so on, they also raise an important philosophical question—could such interventions lead to a mind-blunting effect that would diminish one’s capacity to appreciate life in all its dimensions, making us “unauthentic” humans living a banal, anesthetized existence as uncritical participants in the affairs of the world?.