This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.com. How could I improve myself? How could I make myself better? It would be nice to be a bit

taller, a bit more musical, to find philosophy a little easier to understand. Most of us wouldn't say

no if there were a simple means to enhance memory or concentration,

and surely we'd all welcome being happier.

With the rapid advances in medicine, multiple possibilities already exist for enhancing human beings.

So should we embrace these scientific developments or be wary of them?

Alan Buchanan is a professor at Duke University. Philosophy Bites caught up with him while he was visiting Oxford University.

Alan Buchanan, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

I'm very happy to be here and especially happy to be in Oxford.

We're going to focus on the topic of enhancement. Now when I studied practical ethics at

university that wasn't a topic on the agenda. We talked about animal rights,

euthanasia, abortion. What is enhancement and why is it suddenly so important?

I think enhancement generally now means biomedical enhancement.

That's what people are most interested in

and they're interested in the possibilities for improving

normal human capacities through the use of genetic interventions, either somatic cell or germline

interventions or the administration of drugs for cognitive enhancement or

affective enhancement or neural tissue implants or computer brain interface technologies any number of different technologies which might enhance normal human capacities or even add new capacities that human beings have never had.

But that's very different from a medical intervention to cure something.

I mean, my ligaments torn, somebody's going to repair that for me.

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