The beauty quotient continues to expand making even brown eyes a condition to be fixed according to pharmaceutical companies.
The “lifestyle” drug market — which was estimated to surpass $29 billion in 2007 — pits problems of a social or cosmetic nature against conditions threatening physical health or well-being.
In a world where baldness and frown lines are medical conditions to be cured the boundaries of real illness and self improvement have become quite blurred.
“The debate is often framed here between treatment and enhancement,” said Dr. Joel Lexchin, a professor of health policy and management at York University in Toronto. “They’re taking what is traditionally considered normal human variation and trying to homogenize the way people look. On an individual level, people can do probably whatever they want, but on a collective level, we have to think about whether producing drugs that enhance people is really the best use of our resources.”
