week 6

In chapter three Harris approaches the therapy-enhancement dichotomy through several critics of enhancement, who define enhancement as that which interrupts species-typical function. This dichotomy doesn’t have any corresponding dichotomy between medicine as it is practiced today and as it could be practiced in the future. For instance, dentistry or contraceptives are both preventative medical practices, that by Daniels and Boorse rubric would constitute an enhancement as would everyday enhancements such as makeup. Harris’ use of Occam’s razor is well applied in dispelling the need for noneffective distinctions on what is and isn’t normal. As for classifying interventions that reduce the likelihood of death, according to Daniels and Boorse’s definition, since the diseases of old age is species typical so are the diseases that we vaccinate for. A vaccination is an immune system enhancement that doesn’t restore a function to it’s normal action, it enhances that function as a preventative measure. Therapy and enhancement aren’t mutually exclusive. As Harris puts it: “The Normality of the trait in question is clearly doing no work at all in the assessment of its moral acceptability or of the risks it might be worth running to change things. - The problem seems to be an unjustified assumption that normal traits are acceptable by reason of their normality and that the risks of new “treatments” are justifiable only when the alternative is an inevitable catastrophic disease.- On this view the elixir of life, operating on normal physiology and making it immortal, would not in Daniel’s view be an enhancement!” The concept of enhancement isn’t able to determine in any succinct way a scientifically discrete category.

In chapter four Harris outlines the five ethical objections to life extension: “(i) Life extension would be unjust (ii) It would be pointless and ultimately unwanted because of the inevitable boredom of indefinite life (iii) It would in any event be nugatory or self-defeating because personal identity could not survive long periods of extended existence. I may wish to be immortal but in the end it wouldn’t be “me,” so the project fails (iv) It would lead to overpopulation and perhaps the end of reproduction. (v) Finally, it is claimed that life extension would be prohibitively expensive in terms of increased health care cost.” While I think Harris’ arguments against all of these objections are valid, for me his argument against (iii) and (iv) are understated. As one who anticipates the day when I’m not "this one", his argument against three isn't as persuasive as it could be. On reservation (iv) he only needs to make the point that policy regulating population will need to be instated regardless of if we say "yes" to enhancement.