Augenics
Precision Healthcare for the Many Not the Few
The increased availability and affordability of biomedical enhancements have normalised their everyday use across a wide range of social groups. Students, soldiers, and athletes increasingly take cognitive-enhancing drugs to sharpen their performance. Both men and women use injectables to tackle aging effects. Elderly folk undergo Lasik surgery to boost vision. Prospective parents conduct embryo screening to avert single gene disorders in their offspring (e.g. Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia). Existing parents also rely on genetic tests to map certain character traits (e.g. whether children are predisposed to excel at explosive or endurance sports).
Banning enhancement technologies would be unworkable and unjustifiable. The idea of any government and/or corporate entity regulating them also fills many people with dread. One only needs to recall state-sanctioned support for breeding out “population defects” and the scientific racism inherent in the Eugenics movement (still with us today) to see why the public has deep concerns over who owns and controls enhancement tech.
Bioethics seeks to give people the tools they need to make calculated decisions in the face of complex techno-scientific options. The problem is that in influential countries like Britain, citizens need special permission to screen for a disorder. This legal position is rather nonsensical, as the state already allows people to freely select genes through dating, procreation, and parenting styles. The idea all parents will seek a genetic ideal is misplaced too, because most want their kids to be clones who look and act like them.
COVID-19 left us with the stark realisation that citizens must take responsibility for their future health. This emphasis on self-care can help us advance moral and ethical debates around human enhancement. Replacing dystopian ideas of racial improvement (i.e. Eugenics) with more pluralistic, egalitarian policies supporting self-improvement (i.e. Augenics).
To scale Augenics, dormant shops could be redeveloped as open schools for lifestyle medicine. Fusing edutainment with community-led research, so anyone with a passion for learning can spark positive health behaviour change. For themselves and the communities in which they reside.
Unlike state and private clinics that lock people out of healthcare decision-making and innovation, collaborative ownership central to the open school model means people have a vested interest in creating their futures. Personalising healthcare like never before.
Author
Grant Munro is founder & CEO of MU, (The Makers Union for Empowering Personal Science & Health Innovation). He is also an Honorary Fellow at NZ’s National Institute of Health Innovation.
