The new conservatives in bioethics: Who are they and what do they seek?

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 34-43

  Macklin, Ruth ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33644520947     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hcr.2006.0013     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. I am using this term to refer to the field whose more prominent members are nationally and internationally recognized as contributors to the literature, or as educators and consultants. These include physicians, other health professionals, biological scientists, philosophers, lawyers, social scientists, theologians, scholars in religious studies, political scientists, health economists, and any others who may not fall into these categories. In using the adjective "mainstream" I do not intend to marginalize any individuals or groups.
2. In the United States, these have included the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, the Ethics Advisory Board, the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the current President's Council on Bioethics, as well as specially appointed committees charged with making reports on specific topics, such as the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel and the NIH Human Fetal Tissue Transplantation Research Panel.
3. D. Callahan, "Science: Limits and Prohibitions," Hastings Center Report 3, no. 5 (1973): 5-7.
4. L. Kass, Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York: The Free Press, 1985).
5. L. Kass, "Making Babies - the New Biology and the 'Old' Morality," The Public Interest, no. 26 (Winter 1972).
6. Quoted in L. Kass, "'Making Babies' Revisited," The Public Interest, no. 54 (Winter 1979): 32-60.
7. C. Krauthammer, "The Ethics of Human Manufacture," The New Republic, May 4, 1987, 17-21. Krauthammer is a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.
8. L.R. Kass, "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection," The New Atlantis, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 9-28.
9. C.T. Rubin, "Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature," The New Atlantis, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 88-100.
10. G. Meilaender, "Abortion: The Right to an Argument," Hastings Center Report 19, no. 6 (1989): 13-16;
11. R.J. Neuhaus, "The Way They Were, The Way We Are," in A.L. Caplan, ed., Bioethics and the Holocaust (Totowa, N.J.: Humana Press, 1992): 211-30.
12. C. Krauthammer, "The Ethics of Human Manufacture."
13. E. Cohen and W Kristol, "The Politics of Bioethics: Playing Defense Is Not Enough," The Weekly Standard 9, no. 33 (May 10, 2004). Although Cohen and Kristol do not state clearly and unequivocally their opposition to the destruction of human embryos in stem cell research, their use of the terms "innocent human life" and "nascent human life" place them presumptively in the pro-life camp on the morality of destroying embryos.
14. President's Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (Washington, D.C., 2003);
15. L. Kass, "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls," 22.
16. R. Veatch, "Doing What Comes Naturally: The Dangers of Anti-Technological Romanticism," Hastings Center Report 1, no. 2 (1971): 1-2.
17. Kass, "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls," 22.
18. M.L.T. Stevens, Bioethics in America: Origins and Cultural Politics (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
19. Bioethics in America: Origins and Cultural Politics. Ibid., xiii.
20. Bioethics in America: Origins and Cultural Politics. Ibid., 47.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid, 61.
23. "Neoconservative" is a term that has proven difficult to define. As one writer notes: "Although neo-cons profess devotion to liberal democracy, they have never hesitated to assail 'liberalism', or what they sometimes call with their Christian Right allies 'secular humanism', whose relativism, in their view, can lead to 'a culture of appeasement', nihilism or worse. So, even while supposedly defending 'liberal' and democratic ideals, their attitude is at best ambivalent." J. Lobe, "What is a Neo-Conservative, Anyway?" Inter Press Service News Agency, http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19618, accessed July 20, 2004.
24. See also R. Alta Charo, "Passing on the Right: Conservative Bioethics is Closer Than it Appears," Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 32 (2004); 307-314.
25. Charo, &Passing on the Right,& at 310.
26. G. Meilaender, "The Politics of Bioethics: In Defense of the Kass Council," The Weekly Standard (April 12, 2004 - April 19, 2004). In the quoted passage, Meilaender is summarizing an account by the sociologist John H. Evans without representing it as his own view. Yet Meilaender appears to accept the account uncritically as he does not question Evans's characterization of what bioethicists were up to.
27. Charo, "Passing on the Right," at 310.
28. Y. Levin, "The Paradox of Conservative Bioethics," The New Atlantis, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 53-65, at 65.
29. "The Paradox of Conservative Bioethics," The New Atlantis, Ibid., at 64.
30. Journal of Palliative Care 20, no. 3 (2004).
31. E. Cohen, "The New Politics of Technology," The New Atlantis, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 3-8, at 5.
32. Charo, "Passing on the Right," at 310.
33. G. Meilaender, "Bioethics and the Character of Human Life," The New Atlantis, no. 1, (Spring 2003): 67-78, at 72.
34. E. Cohen, "Bioethics in Wartime," The New Atlantis, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 23-33, at 25.
35. The New Atlantis, Ibid., at 32.
36. Cohen, "The New Politics of Technology," p. 5.
37. Cohen, "The New Politics of Technology," at 5.
38. In addition to Callahan, other prominent contributors to the literature over the years have been Norman Daniels, Steven Miles, Daniel Wikler, Dan W. Brock, and Frances Kamm.
39. G. Meilander, "Bioethics and the Character of Human Life," at 72-73.
40. L. Kass, "The Wisdom of Repugnance," The New Republic, June 2, 1997, 17-26.
41. Levin, "The Paradox of Conservative Bioethics," at 57.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., at 58.
44. Ibid., at 59.
45. An anonymous reviewer of an earlier version of this article characterized my criticism of Levin's and Kass's appeal to emotions and intuitions as an endorsement of "pure, olympian rationality in ethical reflection." That is another example of a false dichotomy.
46. M. Midgley, Hastings Center Report 30, no. 5 (2000): 7-15.
47. Kass, "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls," at 17.
48. R.J. Neuhaus, "The Return of Eugenics," Commentary 85, no. 4 (1988), at 15.
49. Neuhaus, "The Way They Were, The Way We Are," at 222.
50. C. Krauthammer, "The Ethics of Human Manufacture," The New Republic (May 4, 1987): 17-21.
51. E. Cohen, "Bioethics in Wartime," at 29.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., at 30.
54. Ibid.
55. The concept of species-typical functioning as a basis for determining requirements of justice in provision of health care was introduced by N. Daniels, Just Health Care (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
56. Rubin, "Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature."
57. "Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature." Ibid., at 89.
58. The phrase in quotation marks is from Rubin, at 90. No one is cited as the author of this claim.
59. Ibid., at 92.
60. Cohen, "The New Politics of Technology," at 6.
61. Cohen, "Bioethics in Wartime," at 29.
62. I owe this point to Jeffrey Blustein.
63. Cohen, "Bioethics in Wartime."
64. To name only a few: Peter Singer, George Annas, Ronald Bayer, Solomon Benatar, Udo Schüklenk, Susan Sherwin and other feminist bioethicists, among others.
65. Cohen, "Bioethics in Wartime," at 30.