Chemically enhanced life

Once the link between disease treatment and drug use is broken, there is no longer any way to measure the appropriateness of polypharmacy. Bioethicists debate the implications of a pharmaceutically enhanced human being. Is it a cheat, or is this better living through chemistry? I personally have no qualms about prescribing medication for what would not conventionally be called an illness. If the patient seeks to better himself in some way through a new, legal technology, in close consultation with his physician who has explained the risks and benefits, then it would be paternalistic to deny such drug usage. Just as plastic surgeons augment breasts, we will be able to augment many other aspects of our bodies and ourselves with the aid of a prescription pad. The geriatric Baby Boomers of the near future will embrace a new pharmacology wholeheartedly in their old age, perhaps in a way reminiscent of their willingness to “experiment” with other kinds of drugs in the 1960s. Homo sapiens, with our primitive primate inclination to self-medicate, is evolving into a new, higher-order form of Polypharmaceutical Man.