Readers of both the academic and popular literature in bioethics will be well aware that genetic and other forms of so-called human enhancement are clearly on the drawing board. No one knows how long it will take to develop these technologies, but they are most certainly coming. Already, of course, through the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, human embryos are screened for undesirable genetic traits and embryos with those traits are not transferred to a woman’s uterus—they are discarded or used in embryo-destructive research.

A behaviour can often be defined as the conduct of a person, the manner and mode of action in which this person treats others and the way he or she responds to a stimulus. Characterising the behaviour of a person is therefore not a simple affair, with any research in this field becoming a highly complex undertaking, including many variables such as social but also genetic effects.

 The chips are down. Americans have taken to gambling in a big way. In 1998, legalized gambling grossed more than the music industry, the motion picture industry, and theme parks combined ($50 billion).¹ Gambling problems have increased rapidly in the wake of these trends. Of greatest social concern is “pathological gambling,” a diagnosis established in 1980 by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).

The telephone, the airplane, the nuclear bomb, humanity's first journey to the moon, and the Internet: such major generational achievements shape how generations are perceived in history. Most scholars agree that more good than bad has resulted from each innovation or endeavor listed above. For example, the "Manhattan Project" was initiated to develop the nuclear bomb to end a long, brutal war. Historical accounts of World War II tell us that the "right side" won and that oppression and evil were crushed.