Introduction
The distinction between therapy and enhancement is highly debatable, and in most situations, the award is still questionable.
Therapy vs. Enhancement
The difference between therapy and enhancement, while subtle, should not be overlooked.
Therapy is a type of therapy that seeks to rehabilitate an ill person by treating their illnesses, disabilities, conditions, impairments, or deficiencies.
On the other hand, an enhancement is the improvement of a person's characteristics, physical ability, or activity performance with the assistance of a medical professional.
Since the procedures involved in dealing with patients are sometimes identical, they are not mutually exclusive and it is sometimes hard to measure the level of health or improvements different individuals' conditions require.
The difference is that all therapies are enhancements and not all enhancements are medically therapeutic.
It is therefore very unclear how to differentiate a therapeutic enhancement from a therapy treatment while it is easy to tell apart a therapy treatment and a non-therapeutic enhancement.
We can use the moral, ethical, and social understandings of human beings to show the importance of distinguishing the two.
Social, Ethical, and Moral Reasons
In biotechnology, both therapy and enhancement are used to improve human physical and mental performance, health, functionality, or quality of life to individual satisfaction.
To illustrate, Cabrera et al (2014) argue that enhancement is acceptable if it enables development towards what society considers to be the norm, regardless of cognitive effects or social domains.
In addition, their observation led to the conclusion that distinguishing therapy and enhancement improves comfort for medical practitioners and the patients (Bostrom, 2009).
Most therapy treatments are ethical and morally acceptable, while most enhancements are for personal gain and may not be ethical.
Steroids or muscle enhancements can be used to improve the movement of injured or disabled people and are socially, ethically, and morally acceptable forms of treatment that help regain their health. However, they are often prescribed to athletes to increase their speed and stamina against competitors, which isn't ethically correct.
Stimulants like Ritalin are prescribed to children who have problems paying attention, which is an ethical and moral treatment, while it can be prescribed to enhance cognitive performance and focus in children who are perfectly healthy, which is morally and ethically wrong.
Physically Healthy versus Non-Therapeutic Enhancements
Physically healthy people should not be given drugs as enhancements.
Reconstruction is important for people who have been in accidents, born with, or developed deformities so as to boost their confidence through better physical appearances or speech, sight, and vision.
As people age, they require a lot of therapy to pace the heart, to listen or see better, strengthen their bones and muscles, amongst others. All these treatments are socially, morally, and ethically accepted.
Others enhance their appearance by inputting breast implants, lifting their skins, Botox injections, cosmetic surgeries, removing unwanted fats, amongst others, which are morally acceptable as long as whatever they enhance does not hurt others and they are aware of the consequences.
People who take drugs to make them stronger and more active and at the same time more violent towards others make their choice socially, ethically, and morally unacceptable.
Importance of Distinguishing Therapy and Enhancements
It is therefore important to know the difference between the two because one is important to the health and the other is a choice that can be avoided.
Patients put doctors in a medical dilemma because they treat them under a moral and ethical code under oath to avoid harm to the patients at all costs.
Patients ask to have enhancements of their already healthy bodies which could cause more harm than good.
Enhancements via biotechnology show that people no longer appreciate their natural being hence have embraced the technology into a system that can be manipulated to their benefit (Jefferson et al., 2014).
Objections to the Distinction between Therapy and Enhancements
Some scientists argue that there is no reason to differentiate the two because all therapies require enhancements to treat the patients.
Patients can be treated for either physical or mental conditions.
It can therefore be argued that non-therapeutic enhancements are used when patients want to improve their self-image and confidence or to enhance how they carry out activities in the best way humanely possible.
Biotechnology has made that possible hence the calmness of their mental state is improved by the use of enhancements.
Scientists also argue that therapy and enhancements, whether therapeutic or not, are more or less the same and will graduate from therapy and cosmetic surgery to genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology, and neural science amongst others.
The aim is to ensure that biotechnology is used to treat and enhance humans to perform better, live longer, and feel better about their self-image. We could, therefore, question why humans shouldn't be given the drugs that can enhance their abilities and improve their performance in society if the technology exists.
Humans may not need to wait until they are old or frail to enjoy the fruits of biotechnology today (Bess, 2010).
Anybody who does not feel good about themselves may suffer from low self-esteem, depression, and stress, which could lead to other diseases such as stroke and heart attacks. Hence there should be no line drawn between the two.
Response to the Objection
Yes, it is true that humans have the right to their bodies and to make decisions to make changes in whatever way they see fit.
However, a line has to be drawn as to the extent in which they can make those changes in a social, ethical, and morally acceptable way.
The doctors are obliged to give patients all the information pertaining to any drugs to be prescribed or therapeutic and enhancement procedures to be carried out in advance (Farah et.al, 2004).
The patients should be in a position to make an informed decision based on the facts laid out so that they can know if they really need the treatment and enhancements for the improvement of their health or they want the enhancements to boost their physical appearance, sight, speech, and vocals amongst others (Earp et.al, 2014).
After knowing the facts, they can make enhancements while abiding by the laws, rules, and regulations set by the state.
Conclusion
It is evident that medical therapy is ethically, socially, and morally acceptable by all because it helps to treat and heal people who have diseases, disabilities, impairments, or disorders to restore their health or reconstruct their bodies to the normal human form.
Since all therapies have some form of enhancement, we could say that all therapeutic enhancements are acceptable too, since they are also a form of treatment.
It is debatable whether non-therapeutic enhancements are ethical, moral, or socially acceptable depending on the extent.
Physical enhancements on perfectly healthy bodies could improve performance and effectiveness but could be medically destructive to the person's health in the long run.
Socio-economic surroundings influence people's decisions to get enhancements.
Public perspectives of the community and the laws governing the right to make personal changes on one's body, as long as the changes do not cause any harm to the society, determine the moral and ethical perspectives of enhancements.
References
Bess, M. (2010). Enhanced humans versus "normal people": elusive definitions. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 35(6), 641-655.
Bostrom, N., & Sandberg, A. (2009). Cognitive enhancement: methods, ethics, regulatory challenges. Science and engineering ethics, 15(3), 311-341.
Cabrera, L. Y. (2014). Empirical Support for the Moral Salience of the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction in the Debate Over Cognitive, Affective, and Social Enhancement. Neuroethics, 8(1), 243-256.
Earp, B., Sandberg, A., Kahane, G., & Savulescu, J. (2014). When is diminishment a form of enhancement? Rethinking the enhancement debate in biomedical ethics. Frontier in Systems Neuroscience, 12(1), 1-8.
Farah, M. J., Illes, J., Cook-Deegan, R., Gardner, H., Kandel, E., King, P., ... & Wolpe, P. R. (2004). Neurocognitive enhancement: what can we do and what should we do?. Nature reviews neuroscience, 5(5), 421-425.
Jefferson, W., Douglas, T. K., & Savulescu, J. (2014). Enhancement and social virtue. Social Theory and Practice, 40(3), 499-527.\\n
