Dan O'Connor observes:
The ethics of physical enhancement tend to revolve around issues of fairness and justice, issues which tend in turn to be resolved by context and social constructions of what’s fair and what’s not. Thus had Captain American rather been created to be ‘Johnny America, the Olympic sprinter’, we would likely think the enhancements unethical, due to the context of athletic competition in which we tend to operate within a social construction of fairness which views such enhancements as cheating.
However, all is fair in love and war, and – faced with implacable and unambiguously evil foes (the secret science cult HYDRA is the main villain in the movie, working against everyone, including the Nazis), this kind of physical enhancement seems justified. In fact – considering how bloody dangerous it is to drop soldiers into battle, there’s an argument to be made for making the physical enhancement of military personnel a duty of the state. Consider: if we expect these young men and women to put themselves in extreme physical hardship at the behest of our political system, don’t we owe them the best possible physical advantages we can provide?
Kyle Munkittrich zooms in on whether Cap's "embuffening," to borrow O'Connor's phrase, was ethical research.
(Image via Walking Taco)
The Dish 