Interestingly, one sector of medicine that is strongly wed to a naturalist ideology is biomedicine. Human health is usually

understood by biomedicine not merely as the absence of diagnosable disease, but as functioning within a range that is typical for human beings of one’s age and gender (Boorse). For functionalists in biomedicine, the statistically “normal” is morally normative; that is, it represents the state of health that is supposed to be the goal of research and the priority of

practice. This is why biomedical professionals strive to draw a line between their work devoted to addressing health problems and the use of their work for cosmetic, aesthetic, athletic, or social enhancements (Juengst). The use of medical tools for enhancement might be tolerated in a free society, but to the extent that they do not address bona fide health needs, they should not be given a high priority by health professionals and researchers. On what side of this professional boundary line should human growth hormone (HGH) replacement fall? If there is nothing pathological about the aging process itself, critics argue, all the current efforts that health professionals are mounting to combat it seem wrong-headed and wasteful (Callahan, 2000).

From this perspective, it becomes crucial for the ethical debate over anti-aging research to answer the question of whether or not intervening in human aging is a legitimate form of healthcare. Part of the problem, of course, is the current limited knowledge of the fundamental causes and dynamics of the aging process. In this debate, the scientific contest between the theories of aging that rely on accumulated insults and those that look to genetics is crucial. If the aging process turns out to be a confluence of conditions that would individually be considered health problems, and that vary between individuals and across populations, it would be plausible to conceptualize the process as ultimately accidental, and thus to medicalize the causal cofactors as individual health problems (Caplan).

On the other hand, if aging is a natural and inevitable consequence of normal physiology, then the process itself is normal, and therefore healthy. This is a matter of scientific interpretation, but to the extent that cellular, metabolic, and organismic senescence is inherent in the human species, the less legitimate anti-aging research appears as a field of health

science. This in itself does not mean that there is anything intrinsically wrong with anti-aging research, of course, any

AGING AND THE AGED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOETHICS 3rd Edition 115 more than research into advanced tattoo techniques is wrong. It only means that anti-aging researchers must give up their claims to be promoting human health—and the

measure of public support that mantle provides (Murphy). It is unlikely that anti-aging researchers will be able to

offer any intervention that could address the genetically programmed aspects of the aging process in the foreseeable

future. Instead, partial interventions, such as HGH replacement, will be developed in response to genuine health

concerns.

Where training has taken place, the increasing
incidence of harassment and even violence (including
the 1993 and 1994 murders of abortion providers in
Florida) has resulted in more reluctance on the part of
physicians to be involved in the provision of this service. In
response to the escalating violence, Congress enacted theFreedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE, in 1994.
This statute established federal criminal penalties and civil
remedies for violent, obstructionist, or damaging conduct
affecting reproductive healthcare providers and recipients,
and supplemented the penalties available under then-existing
federal criminal statutes such as the Hobbs Act, the Travel
Act, and federal arson and firearms statutes. Rising violence
as well as the federal response highlight serious ethical
questions as to the social responsibility of professionals in
this field to make certain that this procedure is available to all
patients.
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Perhaps the most vivid example from the domain of religion that the body is a cultural phenomenon subject to cultural transformations is given in the classic work on New Caledonia by Maurice Leenhardt, the anthropologist and missionary. Leenhardt recounts his discovery of the impact of Christianity on the cosmocentric world of the New Caledonian Canaques via a conversation with an aged indigenous philosopher. Leenhardt suggested that the Europeans had introduced the notion of “spirit” to the indigenous way of thinking. His interlocutor contradicted him, pointed out that his people had “always acted in accord with the spirit. What you’ve brought us is the body” (Leenhardt, p. 164). In brief, the indigenous worldview held that the person was not
individuated but was diffused with other persons and things in a unitary sociomythic domain: [The body] had no existence of its own, nor specific name to distinguish it. It was only a support. But henceforth the circumscription of the physical being is completed, making possible its objectification. The idea of a human body becomes
explicit. This discovery leads forthwith to a discrimination between the body and the mythic world. (Leenhardt, p. 164) There could be no more powerful evidence that the body is a cultural and historical phenomenon. Insofar as the objectification of the body has the consequences of individuation of the psychological self and the instantiation of dualism in the conceptualization of human being, it has
implications for defining a very different regime of ethical relationships and responsibilities.