TRANSHUMANISM AND TISSUE ENGINEERING: AN ETHICAL FALLACY

Abstract

Tissue engineering is a field that has undergone immense growth and development over these past years. With the aim of repairing, reconstructing or regenerating substitutes of loss or damaged tissues and organs, this promising field has obtained the attention of many, i.e. researchers, healthcare practitioners, research funders etc. Along with its progress, tissue engineering is currently perceived as a tool of more than only to treat diseases; amplifying the range of human abilities in those without pathology. Transhumanism, being the philosophical ideology that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations especially by means of science and technology, aims at using tissue engineering as a tool to achieve its utopian aim. This study uses textual analysis methodology to examine the field of tissue engineering and its relation to transhumanism philosophical ideology and human enhancement. The biomedical hegemony and the associated secular utilitarian bioethical discourse such as in this case, human enhancement and the transhumanist movement have largely displaced the notion of traditional virtue-based medical ethics; from initially to preserve and to restore health of patients to a merely reduced mechanical biomedical practices that serve the secular humanistic and utilitarian frameworks and objectives guised in the fallacies of progress, developments and human rights. Critical evaluations of the concepts and practices of scientific practices, especially of those coming from the Western worldview, are important  to be undertaken to avoid reducing the rich meaning of medicine as the science, art and vocation of healing the patient to the mechanical techniques of applied biology.