In the Biomedical Engineering field, there is a subfield known as Bioengineering, where engineering is applied to biology. This can mean genetic engineering of one's self or family members.
Ethical Issues
As a result of the Bioengineering field, ethical concerns on using Biomedical Engineering for treatment and/or enhancements have arose. Should we be able to biomedically engineer or bioengineer ourselves to be stronger, faster, or smarter? Such questions is the essence of the ethical debate on Biomedical Engineering, as people are very concerned about the possibility of creating superhumans in society. To refute the stance that superhumans would result from the application of Biomedical Engineering unto the public, regulations could be proposed and established in order to keep individuals in society under check and prevent them from abusing the Biomedical Engineering field.
On the legal level, people were also troubled with the boundary between utilizing biomedical engineering for curative purposes, or enhancement purposes.
Due to the issue on the boundaries between using Biomedical Engineering for treatment or enhancement, the legal concern that the Biomedical Engineering field is not following the medical field's purpose of providing patient care with treatments and cures arises. People feel that it would be against the medical field's purpose to be enhancing patient life, and therefore illegal. There is also concerns that certain people would not obey the legal regulations set forth to prevent people from abusing the Biomedical Engineering field. All these can be refuted by diligently enforcing the medical regulations.
Similar to the ethical concerns expressed in ethical debates on Biomedical Engineering, people are also concerned with the social consequences that may result from using genetic therapy from the Bioengineering field.
People have such concerns socially on the biomedical engineering field because they worry that soon-to-be parents would try to "choose" or "customize" their children through genetic therapy. This issue clearly parallels with the ethical issues, since it touches on the wrongfulness of parents denying simple nature to occur during the pregnancy process. Regulations and laws can likewise be enforced in order to prevent such possibilities.
