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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 6
Lesson 8: Enhancement: What Is biomedical enhancement?Evaluating the argument
What is Biomedical Enhancement?
Evaluate and discuss the argument presented in this video.
Male- and female-pattern hair loss is a highly prevalent condition, progressively affecting a majority of men and a significant proportion of women over the course of their lives. Many people who experience pattern hair loss try to manage this condition in various ways, including hundreds of thousands who decide to have their hair restored surgically through hair transplantation.
Should hair transplantation surgery for people with pattern hair loss count as a healthcare treatment or as a biomedical enhancement?
Consider the following range of opinions on this question:
- It should count as a healthcare treatment since it is intended to treat the health affliction of pattern hair loss, helping patients recover the healthy head of hair they once had.
- Although hair transplantation surgery should count as enhancement when used to manage the normal development of pattern hair loss that ultimately affects most people over the course of their lifetime, more extreme or premature cases of pattern hair loss are health afflictions, and in these cases hair transplantation should count as treatment.
- Although pattern hair loss is not itself a health affliction, it sometimes results in psychological afflictions, to the extent that hair transplantation is performed to restore the psychological well-being of these balding patients. It should, therefore, count as a treatment.
- Pattern hair loss is a very common condition that progresses as a more or less normal part of the aging process. So managing this condition with hair transplantation surgery is not a treatment, it’s enhancement—just like it’s an enhancement to get face lift surgery as a way to manage the wrinkles and sagging skin that come with age.
Now, take some time - by yourself or with others - to reflect openly, yet critically, on these various perspectives, and determine where you stand on this issue. What do YOU think, and why?