ETHICS FOR SALE:

Liberty, Equality, Dignity: a review of Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics by Leon R. Kass (Andrew Ferguson, November 4, 2002, Weekly Standard)

As a profession...bioethics finds itself in a pickle. Its original purpose was to place proper limits on the uses we make of science. Yet just at the moment when science reaches for new and unimagined powers, bioethics lacks the philosophical wherewithal to provide any guidance at all. It's little wonder that the profession tumbles down into either corruption or irrelevance. Bioethics has become an instrument of the enterprise it was meant to police. Many bioethicists serve as corporate shills, trotted out by biotech companies to certify that whatever new technology their employers pursue for profit is officially "ethical." Others expend their professional energies on subsidiary questions, or even trivialities.

Here's one example. The success of the Human Genome Project has raised the prospect of "genetic profiling"--assessing a person on the basis of his genetic predisposition to certain kinds of behavior or disease. Among bioethicists, the discussion has been about politics and employment law. How will we prevent employers from discriminating against applicants on the basis of their profile? How will medical insurance rates be fairly adjusted in light of this genetic knowledge? What are the implications for the "right to privacy"?

THESE ARE INTERESTING QUESTIONS, perfect for op-ed page chitter chatter, and no doubt in time legislators and regulators will resolve them (probably without much useful participation from bioethicists). But they are not the important questions; they are not the questions that might point us toward restoring the moral narrative.

Kass approaches the issue of genetic profiling entirely differently. He considers the purposes of the technology itself and its unforeseen consequences. He points to "the hazards and the deformations in living your life that will attach to knowing in advance your likely or possible medical future." Is there sometimes a wisdom in not knowing certain things? The Greeks taught that "ignorance of one's own future fate was indispensable to aspiration and achievement."

Further, how will genetic profiles alter the way in which we think about others, about what it means to be human? "One of the most worrisome aspects of the godlike power of the new genetics is its tendency to 'redefine' a person in terms of his genes," Kass writes. "Once a person is decisively characterized by his genotype, it is but a short step to justifying death solely for genetic sins." Anyone who doubts this should consider the widely popular practice of prenatal genetic screening, after which enormous pressure is brought upon parents to abort any child with a "defect" like Down Syndrome. What that first generation of bioethicists feared is already here.

The questions Kass poses will strike most current bioethicists, and perhaps most of the rest of us too, as fussy and grandiose. They are certainly inconvenient; taken seriously, they might even stand in the way of "progress." Research cloning, genetic therapies, and the rest of the biological revolution have led to a giddiness about the promise of technology and boundless human aspiration--a giddiness that today's bioethicists actively encourage. Kass, in contrast, is a twenty-first century Jeremiah, trying to revive our appreciation for humility, mystery, and human finitude. He could not be more out of step with his times. His work, and this book especially, is a reminder of the original promise of bioethics. It is brave, wise, and doomed.

One of our favorite authors, Andrew Ferguson, on one of our favorite public servants. It doesn't get much better. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 6, 2002 10:06 PM