A Google search for “London+riots+bioethics” yielded nothing of any value. But future discussions about how to respond to mass hooliganism may well require bioethicists. At least that is what a debate between two leading utilitarian bioethicists in the journal Bioethics suggests.

The topic is “enhancement”, the effort to extend artificially the capabilities of the human body and brain. Mild enhancement includes the consumption of alcohol and caffeine, but enthusiasts look forward to using neuroscience, biotechnology and nanotechnology to endow humans with “superhuman” powers. It is “one of the most significant areas of bioethical interest in the last twenty years”, according to John Harris, one of the disputants.

In view not only of the London riots, but of wars and genocides, which seem to be an ineradicable blight on human history, wouldn’t moral enhancement be a good idea? The notion is more radical than it seems. The traditional view of morality assumes free will. How can biological improvements make people more moral?

However, this is the contention of Julian Savulescu, an Australian who is a professor of practical ethics at Oxford, together with a colleague, Ingmar Persson of Göteborg University, in Sweden. He believes that we ought to do all in our power to make people morally better – more altruistic and more empathetic – using all the genetic, chemical, neurological and surgical means at our disposal. This is an argument which he has been pursuing for some time.

He feels that the need for moral enhancement is urgent because destructive technology is outpacing our moral capacity to use it with restraint. We could end by blowing up the planet. Traditional methods of moral enhancement – parenting, socialisation, education, group dynamics – are simply not enough. Savulescu and Persson do admit that the techniques may not be available for a long time.

Harris expresses his scepticism in the February issue of Bioethics. The only reliable ways to morally enhance people are the traditional ones, he says. Besides, Savulescu is too grimly pessimistic about science and seems “to argue that efforts to improve cognitive powers and capacities should be put on hold until moral enhancement is perfected, infallible, and made not only universally available but comprehensively mandatory”. In the meantime, using cognitive enhancement (Harris is a fan) we could solve many of the smaller problems which bedevil our lives.

In an early online article in the same journal, Savulescu and Persson rebut Harris’s critique. They deny being so pessimistic that they would refuse to take advantage of the benefits of cognitive enhancement. “But if it takes moral bioenhancement, these should also be sought and applied, alongside the cognitive means. The future of life on Earth might well hinge upon the adoption of this policy.”

No doubt some boffins in the British government would like very much to slip some chemical moral enhancement agents in the London water supply at the moment.