Original Scientific Paper distributed under the CC BY 4.0
Year 2022, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 30-35
Mia Brzakovic
Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, School of Engineering, D02 PN40 Dublin 2, Ireland &
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia
brzakovm@tcd.ie
Human Enhancement Ethics concerning Future Biomedical Engineering is interdisciplinary research paper connecting purely technical with the social aspect of biomedical human enhancement products, their development, and real-world implementation. The goal of this paper is to collect relevant data from biomedical engineers from different cultural, religious, and social backgrounds, and by combining it with previous research papers and publications, establish the ethics guideline for future generations of engineers.
In recent years, people worldwide are increasingly exposed to new biomedical technologies involving enhancements of the human body. The trend to upgrade bodies with various biomedical elements is rising and people are not aware of the impact it could make on our lives. Until today, biomedical engineering solutions were mostly used to restore the original functions of the human body, and there were not as many ethical concerns. The devices such as artificial hips or heart stents were made to help support health as a substitute for damaged human body parts.
Recent developments in this industry enabled scientists and engineers to improve human natural capabilities, raised more ethical question which was left unsolved for future generations of engineers. People are becoming half human half machine with certain advantages that could potentially make them more powerful than others.
The importance of biomedical ethics is to question current governmental laws concerning this field. The power of inventions in this branch could put decision-makers in the position of "playing God" and therefore crucially change natural development of humans. The manipulation between the peripheral or central nervous systems through the direct interaction between the nervous system and artificial devices could be one of the most critical ethical questions m the future. It could potentially divide the human population into two or more "categories", enhanced and others, giving the first one some abilities others would not have, and therefore creating a social gap that never existed before.
Brzakovic, M. (2022) Human enhancement ethics concerning future biomedical engineering, Journal of Quality and System Engineering, vol. 1, no. 1, 30-35