Table 1 Different definitions of Human Enhancement and their components

Allhoff et al. [12]

Strictly speaking, “human enhancement” includes any activity by which we improve our bodies, minds, or abilities—things we do to enhance our well-being.

x

x

x

Buchanan [10]

A biomedical enhancement is a deliberate intervention, applying biomedical science, which aims to improve capacity that most or all normal human beings typically have, or to create a new capacity, by acting directly on the body or brain.

x

x

x

x

Coeckelbergh [6]

Human enhancement aims at using technology to create better humans.

x

x

Coeckelbergh [7]

Human enhancement can be defined as the improvement of humans by technological means.

x

x

x

Daniels [11]

The treatment-enhancement distinction draws a line between services or interventions meant to prevent or cure (or otherwise ameliorate) conditions that we view as diseases or disabilities and interventions that improve a condition that we view as a normal function or feature of members of our species.

x

x

x

x

Juengst [13]

The term enhancement is usually used in bioethics to characterize interventions designed to improve human form or functioning beyond what is necessary to sustain or restore good health.

x

x

x

President’s Council on Bioethics [8]

“Enhancement,” by contrast, is the directed use of biotechnical power to alter, by direct intervention, not disease processes but the “normal” workings of the human body and psyche, to augment or improve their native capacities and performances.

x

x

x

x

x