As the United States considers how best to restrain the growth of healthcare costs while ensuring quality and access, the potential economic impact of proposals for enhancement medicine should not be overlooked. This essay makes the case that the practice of neuroenhancement, if it were to become widespread, would infringe upon the ethical principle of distributive justice.

The quest for speed has increasingly driven the course of progress. The history of technology records remarkable innovations to advance the cause of speed in communication and travel in particular. Emerging neuropharmaceutical technologies now introduce the prospect of accelerating the speed of thought.

Some time ago on a hospital ethics committee consult, the patient was an anencephalic child, born in the hospital’s NICU.  The physician had brought the case to the committee and held the view that no symptoms should be treated aggressively.