Conservative bioethics & the search for wisdom

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 44-56

  Cohen, Eric ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33644556533     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hcr.2006.0004     Document Type: Review

References (74)

1. D. Kaserman and A.H. Barnett, The U.S. Organ Procurement System (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2002).
2. L. Kass, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity (San Francisco, Calif.: Encounter Books, 2002), 177-98.
3. See, for example, B. Anderson, "Capitalism and the Suicide of Culture," First Things, no. 100 (February 2000), 23-30;
4. D. Bosworth, "The Spirit of Capitalism, 2000," The Public Interest, no. 138 (Winter 2000), 3-28;
5. "'When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness' - Some Reflections on Capitalism and the 'Free Society,'" reprinted in Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 255-70.
6. This is surely the case for many American Catholics, for example, who follow the social teachings of the Church regarding both the moral obligation to defend developing human life and the moral duty to serve the neediest among us.
7. Social conservatives and economic conservatives sometimes support the same policies, but often for very different reasons. For example, low taxes appeal to social conservatives as a way to free private resources for religious education of children or for donations to faith-based charities, and to economic conservatives as a way to free investment in the private market, including investments in companies selling products that social conservatives abhor. But on many of the deepest matters-including the central issues of bioethics-the two faces of American conservatism often disagree. And while social conservatives tend to dominate politically on the right on cultural issues like abortion, they sometimes lack a sophisticated economic or health care policy agenda of their own. "Compassionate conservatism" is a recent effort to correct this deficiency-by using the state to promote morally based social programs or by selling free market policies in moralistic terms-but so far with mixed results and limited policy scope.
8. Tolstoy's question is famously quoted in Max Weber's essay on "Science as a Vocation," where Weber discusses the limits of modern science to answer questions of human meaning and value. M. Weber, "Wissenschaft als Beruf [Science as a Vocation]," Gesammlte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tubingen, 1922), 524-55.
9. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker & Humblodt, Munich. Available at www2. pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/ Weber/scivoc. html.
10. This moral purpose and moral framework are the starting point for all bioethics-left, right, center, and otherwise. If good and evil are an illusion, then the plight of the uninsured is a matter of indifference. It is no more ethical to help them than it is to ignore them. If nothing is morally sacred, then the health of the environment is a matter of indifference. It is no more ethical to protect nature's treasures than it is to destroy them. If all cultures are morally equal, then the political equality of women is a matter of indifference. It is no more ethical to extend voting rights in patriarchal societies than it is to deny them. Both liberals and conservatives believe in right and wrong, justice and injustice, and both believe that the state has a role in promoting good and restraining evil-whether the issue is health care for the poor or embryo research. Almost no one seeks neutrality alone. And inasmuch as bioethics as a vocation has some obligation to guide those who face hard bioethical dilemmas in their own lives, neutrality is not an option.
11. There are so many attacks, accounts, and critiques that one cannot list them all, but here is a representative sample: R. Mishra, "President Bush's Bioethics Panel Has Little Influence," Boston Globe (August 31, 2004);
12. R. Ponnuru, "Kass Blunders, Again," TechCentralStation (March 2, 2004), available at www.techcentralstation.com/030204I.html;
13. A. Caplan, "A Council of Clones," MSNBC (January 17, 2002), available at www.bioethics.net/articles.php?viewCat=2&articleId=35;
14. G. Annas and S. Elias, "Politics, Morals, and Embryos," Nature 431 (2004): 19-20;
15. J. Merz et. al., "Open Letter to Pres. Bush on Bioethics Appointments," March 3, 2004, available at http://www.irbforum.com/forum/ read/2/51/51;
16. E. Blackburn, "Bioethics and the Political Distortion of Biomedical Science," New England Journal of Medicine 350, no. 14 (2004): 1379-80.
17. This philosophical spirit is present is all the Council reports, all of which are available at www.bioethics.gov/reports.
18. National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Ethical Issues in Human Stem Cell Research, volume 1 (Rockville, Md.: National Bioethics Advisory Commission, 1999). Available at www.bioethics.gov/reports/past_commissions/nbac_stem-cell1. pdf.
19. These figures are based on the Council's second term, which ended on September 30, 2005. The nine members are Rebecca Dresser, Daniel Foster, Francis Fukuyama, Michael Gazzaniga, Charles Krauthammer, Paul McHugh, Janet Rowley, Michael Sandel, and James Q. Wilson. See, for example, the personal statements of Dresser, Foster, Gazzaniga, Krauthammer, Rowley, Sandel, and Wilson in Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry (Washington, D.C.: President's Council on Bioethics, 2002).
20. See Fukuyama's testimony at http://www.bioethics.gov/transcripts/dec04/ session4.html.
21. Paul McHugh endorses the use of cloned embryos for research but not IVF embryos, arguing that cloned embryos are not really embryos at all. The distinction is belied by the title of his own article, which speaks of "embryonic" stem cells, presumably taken from embryos: P. McHugh, "Zygote and 'Clonote': The Ethical Use of Embryonic Stem Cells," New England Journal of Medicine 351, no. 3 (2004): 209-211.
22. My debt to these different thinkers is too great to acknowledge here, as is their voluminous body of work. Key texts include: H. Jonas, Philosophical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974);
23. P. Ramsey, Fabricated Man (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970);
24. L. Kass, Toward a More Natural Science (New York: Free Press, 1985);
25. G. Meilaender, Body, Soul, and Bioethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995);
26. W. May, The Physicians Covenant, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000);
27. and D. Callahan, The Troubled Dream of Life, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000).
28. This section is influenced heavily by G. Meilaender, "Terra es Animata: On Having a Life," Hastings Center Report 23, no. 4 (1993), 25-32,
29. and by Kass, Toward a More Natural Science, 249-345.
30. The issue of human equality and human worth is explored in some detail in Taking Care: Ethical Caregiving in Our Aging Society (Washington, D.C.: President's Council on Bioethics, 2005), which I had the privilege to help draft in my role as senior consultant. See especially 103-107.
31. The phrase "at the edges of life" is taken from P. Ramsey, Ethics at the Edges of Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980).
32. For a fuller discussion of the meaning of sight as it relates to the embryo question, see E. Cohen, "Of Embryos and Empire," The New Atlantis, no. 2 (Summer 2003), 10-13.
33. The literature on the moral standing of human embryos is vast, including discussions of the ethical significance and biological nature of continuous embryological development from fertilization forward. Of special importance are the personal statements by William Hurlbut and Robert George/Alfonso Gomez-Lobo in Presidents Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity; chapter 6 of Human Cloning and Human Dignity (especially 152-59);
34. and R. George and P. Lee, "Acorns and Embryos," The New Atlantis, no. 7 (Fall 2004/Winter 2005), 90-100.
35. Both Hurlbut's personal statement and chapter 6 in Human Cloning and Human Dignity address the issue of twinning, and how this biological possibility does not undermine the biological fact that the embryo is, from conception, an individual life in process. The discussion here also draws heavily upon my own essay, E. Cohen, "The Tragedy of Equality," The New Atlantis, no. 7 (Fall 2004/Winter 2005): 101-109.
36. See, for example, the important work in mammalian embryology being conducted by the Zernicka-Goetz Group at the University of Cambridge: K. Piotrowska-Nitsche et al., "Four-Cell Stage Mouse Blastomeres Have Different Developmental Properties," Development 132(3): 479-91;
37. B. Plusa et. al, "The First Cleavage of the Mouse Zygote Predicts the Blastocyst Axis," Nature 434: 391-95.
38. This section is influenced heavily by L. Kass, "L'Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?" First Things 113 (May 2001), 17-24;
39. H. Jonas, "The Burden and Blessing of Mortality," Hastings Center Report 22, no. 1 (1992), 34-40;
40. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (Washington, D.C.: President's Council on Bioethics, 2003), 159-204.
41. For a critical review and survey of transhumanist thinking, see C. Rubin, "Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature," The New Atlantis, no. 1 (Spring 2003), 88-100;
42. see also the quote from William Haseltine on making death "a series of preventable diseases" in L.M. Fisher, "The Race to Cash in on the Genetic Code," The New York Times, August 29, 1999, sec. 3, p. 1.
43. Jonas, "The Burden and Blessing of Mortality."
44. Kass, "L'Chaim and Its Limits."
45. Jonas, "The Burden and Blessing of Mortality."
46. These themes are developed further in E. Cohen, "The Real Meaning of Genetics," The New Atlantis, no. 9 (Summer 2005): 29-41.
47. For an extended discussion of "the good death," see President's Council on Bioethics, Taking Care, 108-113.
48. See, for example, M. Montaigne, "That to Philosophize Is To Learn To Die," The Complete Essays of Michel Montaigne, tr. D.M. Frame (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), 63.
49. H. Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 182;
50. Kass, "L'Chaim and Its Limits," 23-24;
51. Y. Levin, "Imagining the Future," The New Atlantis, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 55-58.
52. For a detailed discussion of the demographic issues facing Europe and Japan, see P. Longman, The Empty Cradle (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 47-67.
53. For a discussion of the character and significance of human procreation, see Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies (Washington, D.C.: President's Council on Bioethics, 2004), 13-19,
54. and L. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom (New York: Free Press, 2003), 111-22.
55. I am indebted to Father Tad Pacholczyk for this account of the exclusive right retained by husband and wife to have children only through one another.
56. For a fuller discussion of disagreements about IVF, especially among traditional Catholics and traditional Jews, see E. Cohen, "A Jewish-Catholic Bioethics?" First Things 154 (2005), 7-10.
57. Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 182.
58. President's Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy, 37-40.
59. Cohen, "The Real Meaning of Genetics," 32-33, 34-37.
60. President's Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy, 101-157. In my role as a senior consultant to the Council, I had the privilege of helping draft the chapter on "superior performance." The discussion that follows in this section on human excellence and human performance draws heavily on the themes and examples contained in that chapter.
61. See also L. Kass and E. Cohen, "The Price of Winning at Any Cost," The Washington Post, February 1, 2004.
62. This example is taken from President's Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy, 128.
63. Beyond Therapy, Ibid., 252-55.
64. Beyond Therapy, Ibid., 214-34. In my role as a senior consultant to the Council, I had the privilege of helping draft the section on "memory and happiness." The discussion that follows draws heavily on the themes and examples contained in that section .
65. It also draws upon my own previously published essay, E. Cohen, "Our Psychotropic Memory," SEED, no. 8, Fall 2003, 42;
66. see also G. Meilaender, "Why Remember?" First Things 135 (2003), 20-24.
67. R. Weiss and M. Fitzgerald, "Edwards, First Lady at Odds on Stem Cells," The Washington Post, August 10, 2004.
68. W Saletan, "The Religion of Stem Cell Research," Slate, August 10, 2004.
69. Many of the items in the agenda described below were recommended unanimously by the Presidents Council on Bioethics in Reproduction and Responsibility, 220-27.
70. These meetings were reported in R. Weiss, "Conservatives Draft a 'Bioethics Agenda' for President," The Washington Post, March 8, 2005.
71. See also E. Cohen, "The Bioethics Agenda and the Bush Second Term," The New Atlantis, no. 7 (Fall 2004/Winter 2005), 11-18.
72. H. Mansfield, "Returning to the Founders," The New Criterion, September 1993.
73. P. Ramsey, Fabricated Man, 30-31.
74. This issue is explored in some detail in Presidents Council on Bioethics, Taking Care, especially 106-107.