ABSTRACT
The international pharmaceutical industry was highly successful, both scientifically and commercially, during the “therapeutic revolution” period of the twentieth century (1950–1990), when many innovative drugs were introduced. The availability of new medicines during this period has had a significant impact on human life expectancy in the developed world. The scene is now set for more sophisticated and invasive therapeutic interventions, and the transhumanism movement proposes the use of radical biomedical technologies to extend human capabilities and improve human experience. In this chapter, I contend that the biomedical technologies proposed by transhumanism may be beneficial for therapy – the alleviation of suffering – as well as for enhancement - and that they may have a greater impact on human flourishing than pharmaceutical medicine to date. However, the ethical acceptability of radical biotechnologies will need to be evaluated before their widespread adoption. This chapter reviews the history of the pharmaceutical industry during the “therapeutic revolution” years, the impact that pharmaceutical medicine has had on the shape of human life, and the key concerns of medical ethics to date.
