The Morality Pill

How does your moral compass look?

by Thomas Verduyn

For millennia, people have turned to medicine to restore their health. The medical arts have also been used to increase human performance, with steroids being one example. More recently, philosophers and ethicists have been debating the possibility and value of using medicine to improve human morality. They call this ‘moral bioenhancement’.

The need for moral bioenhancement (casually referred to as a ‘morality pill’) is due to the fact that evil is a fundamental problem of human nature. But instead of looking to God (as religion teaches) for both forgiveness and his divine power to change, some are now seeking a medical solution. So important is morality to societal wellbeing that writers such as Parker Crutchfield, an Associate Professor at Western Michigan University, have even proposed mandatory and covert moral bioenhancement. [1]

Such ideas may sound defensible when referring to morality in a general sense, but the specific moral dilemmas of the Covid era brought to light the potential for sinister applications. In a 2020 article written by Prof. Crutchfield, covert bioenhancement was deemed appropriate for people refusing masks and vaccines. [2] For those who refused to wear masks or chose not to participate in the mass mRNA technology experiment, this article will be disturbing. The good news, however, is that that article makes some significant errors.

First, human morality is exceedingly complex, and will not be fixed with a few chemical changes to the body. A recent study of the existing literature relating to bioenhancement concluded that "the idea of reliably bioengineering complex cognitive-emotional processes such as altruism or virtues is not feasible in the near future and it is highly unlikely even in the distant future." [3] They added that "many authors overestimate the scientific as well as the practical feasibility of the interventions they discuss, rendering the debate too speculative."

Second, morality itself is a debatable topic. For instance, it is well known that members of the same religious denomination hotly debate certain moral issues such as divorce. Likewise, while Crutchfield assumes it is virtuous to wear a mask and take a Covid shot, millions of people would beg to differ with him. Furthermore, millions of people wore a mask solely to avoid conflict and took the experimental injection entirely on account of fear of losing their job, while in their hearts they knew better. Since it is generally acknowledged that the courage to stand for truth is a virtue, it is safe to say that if scientists had managed to invent a morality pill, the odds are that more people (especially doctors and scientists) would have stood up to resist the lies of the Covid narrative, thereby ending the crisis sooner.

Finally, if a morality pill was ever invented, we might hope that the medical researchers would do the morally correct thing and test their product, for it has been observed that "remarkably little attention has been paid so far to the safety, risks and side-effects of moral enhancement." [3]

References:
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bioe.12496
[2] https://theconversation.com/morality-pills-may-be-the-uss-best-shot-at-ending-the-coronavirus-pandemic-according-to-one-ethicist-142601
[3] https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6939-15-67

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