Science fiction abounds with stories of enhanced soldiers such as Captain America and the Space Marines of Warhammer 40K. The real-world augmentation of soldiers raises a moral concern about informed consent. While fiction abounds with tales of involuntary augmentation, real soldiers and citizens of the United States have also been coerced or deceived into participating in experiments. As such, are legitimate grounds for being concerned that soldiers and citizens could be involuntarily augmented as part of experiments or actual weapon deployment.
Assuming the context of a democratic state, it is reasonable to hold that augmenting a soldier without informed consent would be immoral. After all, the individual has rights against the democratic state, and these include the right not to be unjustly coerced or deceived. Socrates, in the Crito, also advanced reasonable arguments that the obedience of a citizen required that the state not coerce or deceive the citizen in the social contract and this would apply to soldiers in a democratic state. Or any morally legitimate state.
It is tempting to rush to accept that informed consent would make the augmentation of soldiers morally acceptable. After all, the soldier would know what they were getting into and would be volunteering. In popular fiction, one example is Steve Rogers volunteering for the super soldier conversion. Given his consent, such an augmentation would seem morally acceptable.
There are, of course, some cases where informed consent makes a critical difference in ethics. One obvious example is the moral difference between sex and rape; the difference is a matter of informed and competent consent. If Sam agrees to have sex with Sally, then Sally is not raping Sam. But if Sally drugs Sam and has her way with him, then that would be rape. Another obvious example is the difference between theft and receiving a gift. This is also a matter of informed consent. If Sally gives Sam a diamond ring, then that is not theft. If Sam takes the ring by force or coercion, then that is theft and presumably wrong.
Even when informed consent is important, there are still cases in which consent does not make the action morally acceptable. For example, Sam might consent to give Sally an heirloom ring that has been in the family for untold generations, but it might still be the wrong thing to do, especially when Sally pawns the ring to buy ketamine and Tesla stock.
There are also cases in which informed consent is not relevant because of the morality of the action itself. For example, Sam might have consented to join Sally’s plot to murder Ashley but this would not be relevant to the ethics of the murder. At best it could be said that Sally did not add to her misdeed by coercing or tricking her accomplices, but this would not make the murder itself less bad.
Turning back to the main subject of augmentation, even if the soldiers gave their informed consent, the above consideration shows that there would still be the question of whether the augmentation itself is moral. For example, there are reasonable moral arguments against genetically modifying human beings. If these arguments hold up, then even if a soldier consented to genetic modification, the modification itself would be immoral. I will be addressing the ethics of pharmaceutical and cybernetic augmentation in later essays.
While informed consent does seem to be a moral necessity, this position can be countered. One way to do this is to make use of a utilitarian argument: if the benefits gained from augmenting soldiers without their informed consent outweighed the harm, then the augmentation would be morally acceptable. For example, imagine that a war against a wicked enemy is going badly and that an augmentation method has been developed that could turn the war around. The augmentation is dangerous and has awful long-term side-effects that would deter most soldiers from volunteering. However, losing to the wicked enemy would be worse, so it could be argued that the soldiers should be deceived so that the war can be won. As another example, a wicked enemy is not needed, it could simply be argued that the use of augmented soldiers would end the war faster, thus saving lives, albeit at the cost of those terrible side-effects.
Another stock approach is to appeal to the arguments used by democracies to justify conscription in time of war. If the state (or, rather, those who expect people to do what they say) can coerce citizens into killing and dying in war, then the state can surely coerce and citizens to undergo augmentation. It is easy to imagine a legislature passing something called “the conscription and augmentation act” that legalizes coercing citizens into being augmented to serve in the military. Of course, there are those who are suspicious of democratic states so blatantly violating the rights of life and liberty. However, not all states are democratic. The United States, for example, seems to have given up the pretense of democracy.
While democratic states face some moral limits when it comes to involuntary augmentation, non-democratic states appear to have more options. For example, under fascism the individual exists to serve the state (that is, the bad people who think everyone else should do what they say). If this political system is morally correct, then the state would have every right to coerce or deceive the citizens for the good of the state. In fiction, these states tend to be the ones to crank out involuntary augmented soldiers that still manage to lose to the good guys.
Naturally, even if the state has the right to coerce or deceive soldiers into becoming augmented, it does not automatically follow that the augmentation itself is morally acceptable, this would depend on the specific augmentations. These matters will be addressed in upcoming essays.