Article Text
Ethics
Paper
Harris, harmed states, and sexed bodies
Abstract
This paper criticises John Harris's attempts to defend an account of a ‘harmed condition’ that can stand independently of intuitions about what is ‘normal’. I argue that because Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, determining whether a particular individual is in a harmed condition or not will sometimes require making reference to the normal capacities of their sex. Consequently, Harris's account is unable to play the role he intends for it in debates about the ethics of human enhancement.
- Bioethics
- biomedical enhancement
- concept of health
- enhancement
- genetic enhancement
- harm
- human enhancement
- John Harris
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Footnotes
See Commentary, p 262
Competing interests None.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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