ABSTRACT
One example of the uncritical habits of bioethics has been to speak and give life to a discourse of ‘enhancement’ to describe technological work on the body. In line with its anthropocentric focus, this has in most cases been in reference to human bodies. In broader social science approaches to biotechnology there has similarly been an exclusion of other animals, with research on ‘agricultural biotechnology’ often being reduced to GM crops issues and medical ethics or medical sociology often quiet on the role of animals in medicine. To speak of ‘enhancement’ already espouses a particular value judgement as to the role of science and biotechnology in human wellbeing and uncritically enrols a transhumanist promise of technological inevitability. In contrast, the use of scare quotes at the outset of this chapter retains a notion of futures as contested.
