| Description |
I contend that the treatment/enhancement distinction is inherently only able to provide limited aid to arguments in bioethics concerning ethically controversial issues of resource distribution. Rather, normative assumptions about concepts such as human functioning, normality, health, and/or disease that the treatment/enhancement distinction relies on are the primary ethical motivators in distributive justice arguments that consider some medical intervention to be treatment and some medical intervention to be enhancement. Therefore, if arguments are to use the treatment/enhancement distinction to draw conclusions about justice in health care, they must make additional normative assumptions about human functioning and the role of health care. These distributive justice arguments then rely on the additional normative assumptions about human functioning and the role of health care to draw conclusions about treatment and enhancement. Arguments using the treatment/enhancement distinction have not, however, acknowledged these additional normative assumptions. In this dissertation, I make the argument that the treatment/enhancement distinction is not an independent concept. Additionally, I examine ways to cohesively fit consideration for individuals who seek medical intervention for enhancement purposes into accounts of just health care. To do this, I examine arguments concerning growth hormone therapy, performance enhancing drugs, and cognitive enhancement. |
