ONE PILL MAKES YOU LARGER…: So first of all, I missed the point of Murtaugh’s first bioethics-musing, and correct my mistake by telling you all to go read it. It’s about why “Blade Runner” is a better analogy for a dystopian biofuture than Brave New World is. Exec. summary: Government doesn’t just take away our rights by mandating that we be mistreated (as in Jim Crow laws). It also takes away our rights by refusing to recognize us as fully human or fully worthy of liberty (as in abortion).

Murtaugh also muses further here. He brings up several issues centering on the classic question, “Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?” Can we program ourselves, or our children, to be happy and talented and great? Murtaugh mentions reasons for skepticism. I’d add that any kind of happiness that can be found in a pill or a neuro-jiggering device is simply the happiness of the experience machine. It’s a self-focused happiness, rather than a happiness that springs from love; for love requires and is centered on some other person. For more about that than you’ll ever want, click here…