ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by reviewing a set of ideas about enhancement that the author have discussed generically elsewhere, to show how they apply to the gene-doping context. It attempts to get higher resolution in one corner of that map that seems particularly relevant to the gene-doping debate: interpretations of “enhancement” that turn on a distinction between the “natural” and the “unnatural” in the context of sport. In biomedical ethics, the term enhancement is usually used to characterize interventions designed to improve human form or functioning beyond what is necessary to achieve, sustain, or restore good health. One common approach to defining the line between treatment and enhancement appeals to the conventional limits of professional medical practice. Interpreting enhancement in terms of medicine's professional domain can also resonate well with several contemporary social-scientific critiques of biomedicine suggesting that medicine has no intrinsic domain of practice beyond that which it negotiates with patients and society.
