According to Brugger and other opponents of radical enhancement, those “broken eggs” might include increased social tensions – or worse – as the rich and privileged gain access to expensive new enhancement treatments long before the middle class or poor and then use these advantages to widen an already wide gap between rich and poor.“The risks here of creating greater inequalities seem to be obvious,” says Todd Daly, an associate professor of theology and ethics at Urbana Theological Seminary in Champaign, Ill. “And I’m not convinced that people who get these enhancements will want to make sure everyone else eventually gets them too, because people usually want to leverage the advantages they have.”

For some thinkers, concerns about inequality go much further than merely widening the existing gap between rich and poor.They believe that radical enhancement will threaten the very social compact that underpins liberal democracies in the United States and elsewhere.“The political equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence rests on the empirical fact of natural human equality,” writes social philosopher Francis Fukuyama in his 2002 book “Our Posthuman Future.” He adds: “We vary greatly as individuals and by culture, but we share a common humanity.”

Brugger of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary agrees.