Dr Bennett Foddy on enhancement of the body

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Dr Bennett Foddy on enhancement of the body

02 Jun 2011

Dr Bennett Foddy, Deputy Director of the Institute for Science and Ethics at the Oxford Martin School discusses the human body, focusing on cloning and biological enhancement. For Foddy ethical questions over whether we should enhance our bodies are red herrings: “we do it out of every day medical necessity, little by little. We’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and we will continue to do it for hundreds more”.

It is this enhancement that has seen life expectancy double in the UK since the 1840s and, Foddy predicted, what will see it continue to rise until 160 years' old will be the norm. Huge leaps are being made in the development of prosthetic limbs and replacement organs. Indeed the science in these fields is progressing so fast that replacing the whole body as and when is necessary is no longer a flight of fantasy. So is this good? Foddy thinks so. He believes we’ve only got this far because of ‘enhancement’ motivated by a desire to save peoples' lives. And if we don’t want to be supermen in the future “we have to start refusing to help people who we could help cheaply and effectively. In short we have to radically rethink everything that medicine is about.”