150 years of enhancment

Think human enhancement is something new? Hardly. We are by definition the tool making species and have been overcoming our biological limitations for quite some time now.

Take, for example, the British Medical Journal's assessment of the greatest medical advancements since 1840. They listed 10 different breakthroughs, most of which have a definite 'enhancement' quality. Listed below are the advancements along with my commentary:

Sanitation: cleaner, safer environments create stronger immune systems and healthier humans

Antibiotics: giving people the capacity to better fight bacterial infections

Anesthesia: allows surgeons do to more intense and invasive work on their patients while the patients themselves are spared intense physcial pain and psychological anguish

The double-stranded structure of DNA: human genomics for the purpose of eliminating genetic diseases and for eventual work on genetic modification

Oral contraceptive pill: to bypass our reproductive processes and convert the sex act into a recreational activity

Germ theory (the idea that micro-organisms cause disease): knowing how disease spreads changes human habits and therapeutic approaches

Vaccines: creating superhuman immune systems

Development of imaging techniques: human have x-ray vision to peer inside the human body; with fMRIs, humans can see the active parts of the brain

Immunology: the study of diseases for the purpose of treating and tracking them, and to eventually eradicate them

Computers: to disseminate knowledge and expertise, to link experts together, inform patients, run simulations, crunch numbers, archive deep databases -- all to further the medical sciences