{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020403471463877235, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00494281280533364, 'mean_word_length': 5.024930747922438, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Human Enhancement Technologies:

The Western world has undergone a paradigm shift over the course of the last 50 years, whereby individuals have increasingly gained control over their own body and life choices. Meanwhile, new technologies have increased their breadth of application, progressively blending into manifold aspects of our daily life. Human enhancement technologies in particular will bring a new set of risks and opportunities that may significantly disrupt the health and employment sectors, leading us to rethink our approach to science and the human body.


I. Introduction
Our relationship with technology has changed dramatically over the past five decades. It has become an integral part of our daily life; today we are able to buy groceries on the internet, check our bank accounts on our smartphone or smoke chemically flavoured e-cigarettes. However, we do not think of high-tech everyday items becoming parts of our bodies… yet.
This might change in the coming years, with the advent of human enhancement technologies (HETs). An enhancement is 'an intervention -a human action of any kind -that improves some capacity (or characteristic) that normal human beings ordinarily have or, more radically, that produces a new one'. 1 HETs come in all shapes and sizes, from prosthetics to genetic engineering, and are bound to spark debate between the proponents of a right to self-ownership and those advocating a more traditional view of the sanctity of the human body.
This article will first address the growing importance of personal autonomy and control over one's own body in modern society through a human rights lens. Then, will demonstrate how HETs challenge the very notion of health as we understand it. The article will conclude with a closer look at genetic enhancements and the various issues they raise.

II. The Rise of Personal Autonomy
In essence, personal autonomy is the power to make choices in regard to our own bodies. It is what enables us to display our tastes, our personality, and it should not be taken for granted. For example, dicta-torships and authoritarian regimes tend to restrict body freedoms, either by way of prohibition or compulsion. Fallacious, sometimes dangerous ideologies often lay the ground for state programs that remove people's most basic liberties. In a not-so-distant past, those types of policies led to slavery by colonial powers, state-backed eugenics in Nazi Germany and coerced sterilisation of indigenous women in Canada. In such settings, the introduction and use of HETs could have devastating effects because they would essentially negate the ability for individuals to express any kind of choice.
Nevertheless, optimists may argue that times have changed. Human rights standards keep improving globally, civil liberties have increased, and the progressive empowerment of individuals has enabled them to regain control over their own bodies. But to what extent do we actually exercise this control? Depending on the applicable legal system, the answer may vary.
In the United States, citizens have traditionally enjoyed a high degree of freedom with regards to decisions affecting their body, their beliefs or more generally their lifestyle. This is a direct consequence from the importance given to the right to privacy. This right, which has achieved quasi-constitutional status since the landmark Supreme Court case Griswold v Connecticut, essentially prevents public au- In Europe, on the other hand, Constitutional Courts usually give priority to well-established public order principles that safeguard the values deemed most important by the states. This is especially true in civil law countries, such as France or Belgium, which strictly uphold principles like the unavailability of the human body, whereas the legal status of human body parts remains unclear in common law countries 4 . However, this lack of consensus seems to be progressively fading as a result of the significant changes in society's attitude towards the human body, which are crystallised in the recent case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). 5 Indeed, starting in the 1960's, the last decades of the 20 th century saw growing calls for political liberalisation and expanded civic rights by large population groups throughout Europe. A shift in mentality took place, as the eagerness for individual self-governance rose and the prevalence of conformist ideas declined. Accordingly, the ECtHR, undeniably inspired by the American right to privacy, began interpreting more broadly the scope of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights; in 2002, the legal notion of personal autonomy was born. 6 The case of Pretty v the United Kingdom, also known as the right-to-die case, marked the first step of a spectacular rise of this notion, which the ECtHR even ended up acknowledging as a right. 7 Personal autonomy, understood as a right to make choices about one's own body, is a prerequisite to freely use HETs in modern democracies. It certainly is a powerful tool for those advocating a right to full self-sovereignty or self-determination. But most importantly in our case, it may function as a strong vector for normalising the use of emerging or innovative technologies within the human body. Our limbs are becoming increasingly shaped by and intertwined with technology; whether we seek convenience, customisation or performance, it is undoubtedly the path we as a society have embraced. Yet oddly enough, the term 'enhancement' remains largely unknown to the broader public. 8 This comes as no surprise, since today most HETs are merely diverted uses of medical treatments.

III. The Therapy vs Enhancement Distinction
No one would dispute the fact that therapeutic treatments play a major role in sustaining good health. When we are struck with illness or when our physician spots something unusual in our blood test, we resort to treatments in order to help restore our metabolism to its normal workings. The reason for using HETs, on the contrary, is to bring the capabilities of our body or mind beyond their ordinary level; however, this does not necessarily correlate into an uplift in baseline health measurements. This could imply that HETs are somehow dissociated from the concept of health as we commonly perceive it, making them seem like a commodity product. But what does it actually mean to be healthy? According to the World Health Organization, health is 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity'. 9 This definition provides the advantage Despite these explanations, sceptics were quick to draw an impermeable border between HETs and therapeutic treatments, arguing that the former was ethically dubious and the latter completely fine. Using such a shortcut proves problematic, and expert panels on both sides of the Atlantic agreed that this view failed to consider many parameters. In the US, former President George W Bush's Council on Bioethics released a report titled 'Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness' which deconstructed this somewhat artificial moral distinction. 12 Similarly, a 2009 study commissioned by the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) panel explicitly addressed the issue, pointing out that while there are certain characteristics that do fundamentally differ from one to the other, HETs and therapies increasingly tend to overlap. 13 Nevertheless, even though it may appear as a false dichotomy, it is important to bear in mind that HETs and therapies serve a separate purpose, as the first aims to improve the capabilities of the body and the second aims to restore health. Keeping a clear distinction is essential if we are to define a framework for HETs, with significant cultural, ethical and social implications for individuals as well as for policymakers. That being said, both disciplines will inevitably feed from each other, learning lessons and sparking ideas. Technologies that have potential applications for HETs can help reinvent traditional therapies and push forward the overall state of medicine.
For instance, the onset of illness is currently the starting point of the treatment process. But the emergence of P4 medicine (predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory) may change the way we conceive healthcare and radically transform medical systems. 14 The idea underlying P4 medicine is that studying a person's genetic susceptibilities along with their lifestyle and social environment could al-low for the detection of illness before it even appears, thus facilitating its 'treatment'.
Genomics -the study of complex sets of genes and how they interact with each other and with their environment 15 -will play a key role in this new paradigm. Advances in the fields of computer technology and DNA sequencing techniques have allowed for its rapid development, opening up possibilities for population-wide research and original public health initiatives. But at the same time that opportunities arise, other types of risks are looming. The big data needed to effectively use genomic tools could be diverted, and genomic data privacy is a topic that most certainly will fuel heated discussions in the near future.

IV. Genetics and the Law
At a different scale, our knowledge and mastery of genetics have also considerably expanded. This unfortunately comes with a set of drawbacks; I will focus specifically on two issues, namely genetic discrimination and controversies surrounding the alteration of one's genetic fingerprint.

Genetic Discrimination
In the context of HETs and because they are intrinsically linked to predictions as well as measurements of performance, the sectors of employment and insurance are particularly exposed to high risks of discrimination. Genetic discrimination is nothing new: a 1992 study conducted by a team of American scientists showed that after taking genetic tests, individuals labelled with genetic conditions suffered stigmatisation and were denied basic services such as insurance coverage or adoption requests, even if the individuals concerned were asymptomatic or merely harboured disease-associated genes. 16 In employment matters, genetic screening could potentially lead employers to only hire workers whose genetic constitution shows that they are at low risk of falling sick, and discard all the others who were less fortunate at birth. On the flip side, genetic monitoring might prove useful in a work environment where the employees need to handle toxic products that can influence genetic features, for their own safety but also for that of their co-workers or third parties. 17 With respect to insurance however, it seems that no one is winning: insurers would evidently raise premiums of persons at risk (or default premiums in case you refuse to hand out your genetic test), whereas policyholders would knowingly hide or forge their results. Low risk individuals might even decide to opt out of the insurance market and cover their own expenses. By taking out the uncertainty factor, the very principle of the insurance contractrisk pooling -becomes compromised.
HETs do not per se create genetic discrimination -this phenomenon does not necessarily correlate with the mainstreaming of HETs -however, they might amplify the divide between the genetically strong or those who can afford an enhancement, and those who cannot. Genetics are becoming a new marker for discrimination and HETs will potentially play a part in increasing wealth disparities in the coming years. The question, then, is what can we do about it?
The answer probably lies in the protection of individual genetic data and limitation of access to this data by unauthorised parties. But the situation is made trickier by the fact that genetic data is partly shared between members of the same family; disclosure of one member's genetic information can lead to a breach of the others' genetic privacy. The problem was explicitly addressed in the US, where Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) in 2008. GINA expressly prohibits employers and insurers from requesting or purchasing genetic information pertaining to individuals concerned or their family members. 18 In Europe, the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo Convention), binding on those member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) 19 that have ratified it, ensures the respect of the principles of confidentiality as well as non-discrimination on grounds of genetic heritage, and narrows circumstances in which predictive genetic tests may be performed. 20 Non-binding instruments, such as the 2016 Recommendation on data resulting from genetic tests and the revised Recommendation on the processing of personal data in the context of employment, are based on the same approach. 21 In the European Union's legal system, genetic information qualifies as sensitive data under Article 9 (1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which makes it prohibited to process unless specifically authorised under Article 9 (2). 22

Alteration of One's Genetic Fingerprint
Perhaps even more contentious than control over our bodies is the subject of control over our genetic material. Genetic engineering is technically very much  Human Enhancement Technologies feasible today, only for now it is exclusively used for research and strictly therapeutic purposes. Nevertheless, medical acts affecting our genome are slowly becoming trivialised, paving the way for wider acceptance of genetic enhancement. Sometimes, personal autonomy is invoked to justify freely disposing of one's genetic material, as in the case of a woman willing to donate her frozen embryos to scientific research. 23 Other times, a breakthrough in gene therapy will make it possible to cure (or at least mitigate) a disease refractory to more traditional therapies. 24 In the latter instance, a person's genes are directly altered. This can be done in two ways: either via somatic gene therapy, whereby only the genetic material of body cells is being modified, or germline gene therapy, which targets the gametes. 25 It follows that somatic gene therapy affects only the individual undergoing treatment, whereas the effects of germline gene therapy -or enhancementwill be passed on to their offspring. From a legal standpoint, ethical conundrums aside, somatic gene therapy is perfectly fine. The status of germline gene therapy, on the other hand, is unclear. As of today, no universally binding treaty dealing with the matter exists, which leaves it up to the states. In the US, human germline modification is de facto banned as a result of a rider on the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016, even though no federal legislation expressly prohibits it. 26 In Europe, the Oviedo Convention stipulates that interventions seeking to modify the human genome may not aim to introduce any modification in the genome of any descendants, but states that have not ratified it remain free to legislate as they see fit. 27 If germline gene therapy could theoretically eradicate over the span of one generation most hereditary disorders, some fear that it would rapidly turn into a way to create 'designer babies' or to promote eugenics. Proponents of those concepts may argue that genetically enhancing the future child is in his best interest, since he will be able to become virtually anything in life. 28 However, such a view fundamentally disregards the potentially disastrous psychological consequences that the genetically engineered child might face, not to mention the unknown side effects germline gene therapy could show in the longer term. In the end it all boils down to personal choice, which cannot be made by the parents. Along the same lines, the Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE as well as a handful of legal scholars have put forth the idea of a right to a genetic inheritance which has not been artificially interfered with, either to the benefit of the child once he is born (embryos, as a rule, do not enjoy legal personality) 29 or to the benefit of mankind as a whole. 30

V. Conclusion
For better or worse, the world around us is constantly evolving. The pace is fast, and HETs are one of many emerging technologies that are bound to expand globally. Our society reflects our aspirations; 31 and it shows signs that we are longing for more autonomy in our life choices and in the way we make them. The focus has shifted from the protection of conservative values to the fostering of personal growth and self-fulfilment.
HETs also make us question seemingly obvious constructs such as the notion of health. We may be approaching a medical revolution, a new era that comes with its opportunities and risks. Progress in genetics and genomics could improve the living conditions of millions, as much as they could create a pervasive form of social Darwinism. The development of HETs raise a number of issues that are at the crossroads of science, law, ethics and philosophy: are we playing God? To what degree should we apply the precautionary principle? What responsibility do we bear towards our own body? Dealing with these mat-ters is no easy feat. But it is for certain that finding the answers will require critical forward thinking as well as genuine cooperation on the international scale.