Jon Rueda (FiloLab, UGR), Pablo Garía Barranquero (UMA) and Francisco Lara (FiloLab, UGR) have recently published an article entitled Doctor Please, Make Me Freer: Capabilities Enhancement as a Goal of Medicine (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-021-10016-5, 2021) in Medicine, Healthcare & Philosophy magazine. In their article, they address the debate on human enhancement and medicine’s goals. Here is the abstract of the research article:
“Biomedical innovations are making possible the enhancement of human capabilities. There are two philosophical stances on the role that medicine should play in this respect. On the one hand, naturalism rejects every medical intervention that goes beyond preventing and treating disease. On the other hand, welfarism advocates enhancements that foster subjective well-being. We will show that both positions have considerable shortcomings. Consequently, we will introduce a third characterization in which therapies and enhancements can be reconciled with the legitimate objectives of medicine inasmuch as they improve the capabilities that enable the freedom to pursue personal well-being.”
