Ethics, Enhancement and Public Health. (360G-Wellcome-106706_Z_14_Z)

Health interventions are effective only if they confer an improvement: they are only effective if they enhance. However, enhancement is often assumed to be something beyond the nominally therapeutic borders of medicine, since enhancement typically involves improving health and functioning to a state that is better than normal. This makes it difficult to draw a clear line between therapy and enhancement. Because of this, the distinction between enhancement and the prevention of illness and diseas e is even more ambiguous, because therapies are at least administered to restore normality, whereas preventative health measures - much as enhancements - are defined by their being given to people in normal healthy states. Given the preventative role of public health medicine and policy, enhancement may have a connection to these which requires examination. The project therefore aims to answer two (bioethical) research questions, via conference presentations and the production of two original re search papers: 1: What is the relation between enhancement, illness prevention, and the aims of public health? 2: Is the status of an intervention as a therapy or an enhancement irrelevant to its legitimacy beyond a certain threshold of public utility? If so, what is it?