Shaping Our Selves

When bioethicists debate the use of technologies like surgery and pharmacology to shape our selves, they are, ultimately, debating what it means for human beings to flourish. They are debating what makes animals like us truly happy, and whether the technologies at issue will bring us closer to or farther from such happiness.

Erik Parens is a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, NY. He is also a member of the Center for Research on Ethical, Legal & Social Implications of Psychiatric, Neurologic & Behavioral Genetics at Columbia University, and a Fellow of the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania.