[Should medicine encourage doing? Biomedical engineering ideals and the issue of improving humans].

Abstract

In the contemporary biomedicine, the new medicines and technologies can be used not only to cure the patients but also to enhance human capacities: genetic design, alteration of cognitive and emotional functions, increase in life-span, or to boost performances in sport... This evolution represents a paradigmatic change in the medical practice. It is not the mere restoration of health which is expected anymore. What is required is "the perfectibility of the human being". In this article, the emergence of the "enhancement technologies" is examined from an ethical and philosophical perspective.