There was some talk here about height taxes, but there's a better solution - redefine shortness as a treatable condition and use HGH to cure it. They even got FDA on board with that, at least for 1.2% shortest people.
Unsatisfactory sexual performance became a treatable condition with Viagra. Depression and hyperactivity became treatable conditions with SSRIs. Being ugly is already almost considered a treatable condition, at least one can get that impression from cosmetic surgery ads. Being overweight is universally considered an illness, even though we don't have too many effective treatment options (surgery is unpopular, and effective drugs like fen-phen and ECA are not officially prescribed any more). If we ever figure out how to increase IQ, you can be certain low IQ will be considered a treatable condition too. Almost everything undesirable gets redefined as an illness as soon as an effective way to fix it is developed.
I welcome these changes. Yes, redefining large parts of normal human variability as illness is a lie, but if that's what society needs to work around its taboos against human enhancement, so be it.
Is there a fact of the matter for it to be a lie about?
I think so. The traditional definition of an "illness", I think, is something that would cause you pain even if you were stuck on a desert island. Eg., even if you were stranded in the middle of nowhere, you still wouldn't want to get the flu. The point of the post is that the word "illness" is gradually being redefined more broadly, to "any physical/mental characteristic that society views as negative".
Eg., if I were 4'10", and stuck on a desert island, would it bother me to be 4'10" instead of 5'10"? I doubt i... (read more)