Human Enhancement and Challenges for Opportunity Maintenance

Abstract: Education is a critical element of securing opportunities for young people, but securing better educational standards for minoritized groups is a pressing and long-term challenge. In previous work, Keisha Ray argued that using study drugs (e.g. ADHD medications used off label to enhance cognition) as a short-term solution to raise children of lower academic schools to a higher competitive standard may be justified on the grounds of “opportunity maintenance.” That is, where “individuals are biologically normal but not societally normal” the use of study drugs is neither therapy nor enhancement along a conventional binary understanding, but rather is used to increase opportunities for socially disenfranchised populations.

In this paper, we argue that an unexplored element of Ray’s arises in the relationship between the biological capacities she identifies and the external societal factors it seeks to solve. After an exploration of opportunity maintenance as a productive contribution to the enhancement literature, we identify three potential barriers to successful, biomedical opportunity maintenance. First, paradoxical outcomes may arise in cases where executive function interventions impair academic success in practice. Second, when opportunity may be positional in nature, biomedical interventions may fail when they cannot change relative orderings of student success. Finally, Ray’s approach to study drugs may be underdetermined by e.g., bias in the education system and job market. We conclude in agreement with Ray that faster solutions to educational gaps are imperative and suggest ways to overcome barriers through mentorship and organization as part of a portfolio of opportunity maintenance.

Skylar Bird – University of Kansas Medical Center