**2. Human empowerment: definitions and delimitation of the scope of investigation**

The term human empowerment refers to an improvement of the human condition through the use of *techne*, precisely nanotechnologies, biotechnology and computer technologies are used to achieve this goal. These biomedical technologies or, alternatively, the use of drugs are applied to pursue, as a final purpose, the increase of the normal functioning of the body and/or psyche.

In other words, scientific and technical knowledge is not used to treat a disease or disease processes, but to improve natural human performance through overtaking [4].

This phenomenon involves the use of psychopharmacological products studied, created and tested to solve, at first, the disorders and therefore having strictly therapeutic purposes, to be used to manipulate in the sense of improving minds not affected by pathologies, that is, normal minds.

In contemporary society there is a medicalization of life and the corresponding creation of a need for care for any human condition, not pathological but physiological; This is an appropriate aspect to determine the promotion of any successful drug [5].

This reflection leads to question the distinction between normality and abnormality, between physiological and pathological event and finally between therapeutic treatment and enhancement.

In order to investigate the latter binomial, the present literature is used, according to which, by treatment, reference should be made to employment, the use of biotechnological means and pharmacological treatments to treat individuals with known diseases or disabilities in order to restore a normal state of health [6].

Strengthening, on the contrary, concerns all interventions intended to improve the human condition both in its physical and mental condition regardless of what is necessary to maintain or restore health [7].

The distinction just presented is based on two crucial points.

The former has moral connotations and tries to distinguish between acceptable uses and uses that cannot be defined as such: if medicine is considered as a good, from an ethical point of view, empowerment would bring with it aspects that can be defined as suspicious. In addition to this, on the basis of this first criterion, the priorities of medicine could be defined, namely that of treating patients, in the first instance, and subject to the application of practices aimed at improving certain characteristics.

The second concerns a strictly political-economic aspect and, according to this criterion, only therapeutic treatments are subsidized in an almost integral way, while the improvement treatments remain the responsibility of the individual.

The above distinction has its pitfalls, since it must be considered that any therapeutic treatment is proposed to offer an improvement and that a complete restoration of normality is often not possible [8]. Another consideration concerns the reflection that it is almost impossible to distinguish unequivocally between therapy and empowerment as concepts with a cultural foundation and convention and therefore not a certain definition. This statement is of greater importance in the light of the historical and cultural evolution that has affected the concept of health [9, 10] and disease which, in turn, have uncertain and blurred boundaries in the light of biotechnology evolution [11].

The idea behind the strengthening is that of a new concept of health based on a subjective conception: we are witnessing a transition from a concept of objective health, that is to say as psycho-physical integrity and assessed on the basis of certain biological parameters, to a modern understanding of health based on a strictly personalistic meaning [12]. The latter would have as parameters not only the biological ones currently in use but also the experience of the person and, of consequences, dynamic and relational aspects of the context in that particular individual is to live.

The new meaning of health is also supported by normative sources: the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as «a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not only absence of disease or infirmity». This definition provides an all-round picture of health which is

composed of two elements: one negative understood as absence of disease and one positive integrated by a complete state of well-being [13].

In the light of this it emerges that the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being belongs to the world of desire and not to reality, In addition, if a subjective notion of health is adopted, every form of empowerment must be qualified not only as lawful but also as a genuine right forming part of the evolution of mankind. Consequently, if the objective becomes the pursuit of the desired state of well-being, then an indiscriminate use of the new technologies that technical and scientific evolution makes available to the individual will be admissible. At the same time, however, a concept of health totally detached from a previous state of pathology or in any case not characterized by a preventive or curative purpose is served by the limited financial resources that a State can make available to an individual.

An attempt to delimit between enhancement and therapeutic treatment was made by the Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) which in the "Human Enhancement Study has tried to delimit the field between three different types of intervention:


Given the problems highlighted briefly, five different models of possible regulation have been proposed.

The first is that of prohibition, as opposed to this is that of total laissez-faire, the third is characterized by an approach that can be defined as moderate and proenhancement, the fourth from a restrictive approach and the last from the case by case approach model [15].

At present, the greatest moral and ethical problem is the impact that new technologies of empowerment could have on the nature and authenticity of man understood as identification of the individual with their own fundamental abilities and characteristics that could be altered by interventions which are not strictly therapeutic and medical [16].

#### **3. Doping as human empowerment**

Doping has been defined as one of seven types of enhancement (cosmetic surgery, prohibition of eugenics selection, smart drugs, deep brain strimulation, military enhancement and biological enhancement. Doping is therefore a strengthening technique whereby the physical and/or biological conditions of the athlete are artificially altered through the administration of substances and certain methods.

At a time when we are dealing with the problem of doping, we must remember, as has been said, that if every historical moment provides for the creation of its own sport at the same time, every epoch is inclined to create its own doping.

The very essence of doping appears to be closely linked to the results of medical and pharmacological research, whereas.

The assessment of the eligibility of substances suitable for enhancing an artificial performance depends on a strictly legal choice as well as anthropological, moral and social based on the definition of the model of man and opponent that you want to admit.

#### *Human Empowerment between Ethics and Law DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96724*

From an etymological point of view the word doping seems to derive from the term "dap" that was used in the Dutch colonies in Africa and that indicated a fortifying alcoholic drink that was taken by the warriors of the Zulu ethnic group to face the battle with the best possible personal performance.

A further origin of the noun doping seems to be "dope" that is a trade name of a liquid used by the pioneers of North America to be able to harden the leather already used to then obtain soles from shoes. For others, doping should come from the word "doop" which indicated an exciting drink that was used by hunters in the Hudson Basin to withstand the physical difficulties of the environment.

In doctrine and literature it has been argued that the most credited hypothesis of the word doping would be nothing more than a transcription in English of the word "dop" with which was indicated an exciting drink used by the Kafir tribe during the performance of ritual dances.

The date certain concerning the first appearance in the word doping is 1889 year in an English vocabulary, in the same year the term sees its introduction in the world of sport to indicate a mixture formed by opium, other narcotics and tobacco that is administered to racehorses in North American racecourses to reduce performance and then to control the results of races and the related money from illegal betting.

Despite the controversial origins of the etymology of the term, the greatest difficulty is in arriving at a definition of this word. The most problematic aspect is that the expression doping is suitable to indicate an extremely heterogeneous phenomenon.

In 1962, the Italian Sports Medicine Federation (FMSI) qualified the doping phenomenon as the intake of substances suitable to artificially increase the performance in the race of competitors thus affecting the moral and physical and mental integrity.

The Council of Europe considered doping the ingestion or use of non-biological substances of any nature or physiological substances by healthy individuals with the aim of artificially and unfairly improving its own advantage in anticipation of a competition.
