Julian Savulescu

Julian Savulescu  link (Bioethicist)
File:Julian Savulescu.jpg
Born	22 December 1963 Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	Haileybury College,Monash University
Mentors	Peter Singer
"Bioethicist" creating justifications for "moral bioenhancement" of hundreds of millions of people with the help of drugs and extreme surveillance.

Julian Savulescu is an Australian philosopher and bioethicist who creates justifications for the rulers to force "moral bioenhancement" on hundreds of millions of people with the help of drugs and extreme surveillance.

Background

Savulescu was born in Geelong, Australia. His parents were Romanian and Savulescu said they left the country after World War 2.

Education

He attended Haileybury College in Melbourne, and completed his medical training at Monash University, receiving a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS). He also received a Bachelor of Medical Science (BMedSc).

He then he gave up his career as a neurologist and wrote a doctoral thesis (PhD) in bioethics at Monash University under Peter Singer's guidance. The subject of the thesis was "Good reasons to die".

From 1994 to 1997, he was a Sir Robert Menzies Medical Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he studied with Derek Parfit.

Career

From 1999 to 2002, Savulescu was a professor in the University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine. During this period, he was also Director of the Ethics Program at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.

In 2002, Savulescu was appointed to the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, becoming the second holder of this position after Roger Crisp. In 2003, he founded the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and held the position of Centre Director until 2022. He then kept the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics part-time.

In August 2022, Savulescu was appointed Professor in Medical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, where he also heads the Centre for Biomedical Ethics.

Works

In his 2012 book Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement he argues for drugging the population, in combination with extreme surveillance, for what he describes as moral bioenhancement", :

Turning now to actual prospect for moral bioenhancement, one of the most promising lines of research has been on the hormone and neuro­transmitter oxytocin. Oxytocin is naturally elevated by sex and touching, but it can also be elevated by nasal spray. When oxytocin is administered via nasal spray, it crosses into the brain. [...]To proceed, co another class of current pharmaceuticals which have moral effects, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are commonly prescribed for depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder.

There are then prospects of moral bioenhancement, even if so far no biomedical means of moral enhancement with sufficiently precise effects haw been discovered, and perhaps they will never be. However, it is not surprising that no straightforward moral enhancers have hitherto been discovered because research into moral enhancement is a tiny field that is only a few years old. Even if such means were discovered, the daunting task of applying them to a sufficient number of people - probably in the range of hundreds of millions-would remain. [...]In our view it is a serious mistake co reject moral bioenhancement out of hand.

Although a great deal of moral improvement is hard going, it should be noted that some of it could be achieved quite easily because human beings are so prone to conformism.

Therefore,we think that the application of means of surveillance of citizens which go beyond those used in the fight against traditional crimes are necessary. These means involve setting aside what people in liberal democracies have come to regard as rights, in particular the right to privacy.

Irrespective of whether the means of moral enhancement be traditional or biomedical, they will scarcely be enough, given the gravity of theproblems that we have described: it is likely that we will also have to accept a rather extensive surveillance by the state.

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