U.S. Public Opinion and Interest on Human Enhancements Technology

The World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Human Enhancement’s mandate calls for an exploration of how development in human enhancement could impact industry, governments, and society.  Part of this exploration is an adequate understanding of how the public regards human enhancement generally and particular enhancements specifically.

AARP’s research approach started with an assessment of technologies that seek to correct health deficiencies, and then moved to capture pubic opinion of how these technologies could be used to enhance normal human abilities.  We believe questions about therapeutic use of technologies sets a needed context for an adequate assessment of how these technologies could be used to augment human abilities.  

This approach of moving from therapeutic to enhancement uses five health issues as the context for our questions:  eyesight, joints, dementia, hearing, and genomic maladies.  Other parts of the research focus on the role of technology in society, quality of life measures, religiosity, and a complete demographics battery.​

For more information contact LSkufca@aarp.org.