Pharmaceutical Cognitive Enhancement: Interrogating the Ethics, Addressing the Issues

Abstract

This chapter aims at critically examining this debate and some of the key issues it raises about biomedicine and society. We are not going to engage in detailed philosophical argument; rather, we provide a sociological commentary of the way discussions around enhancement have been conducted to date, and reflect on the role of scientific speculation in the creation of expectations about the future. As part of this analysis, we want to question both the underlying assumptions and the overall framing of the debates around cognitive-enhancing drugs. In doing so, we aim to shift their dominant focus, and attend instead to a series of important issues that have thus far been under-explored and that need to be addressed by both policymakers and the scientific community. Our objective is not to argue that enhancements should be prohibited; rather, that such anti/pro debate detracts from the real issues at stake, which are matters of safety, efficacy, and the kind of society we want to live in.