The Presidents Advisory Council on Bioethics(known to many of us in the trade as the bioluddite council) has just released a 555 page report titled Human Dignity and Bioethics.
Dr. Steven Pinker takes strong exception to this report in The Stupidity of Dignity.
I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Pinkers conclusions.
Human Dignity and Bioethics consists of--
28 essays and commentaries by Council members and invited contributors is their deliverable, addressed directly to President Bush. The report does not, the editors admit, settle the question of what dignity is or how it should guide our policies. It does, however, reveal a great deal about the approach to bioethics represented by the Council. And what it reveals should alarm anyone concerned with American biomedicine and its promise to improve human welfare. For this government-sponsored bioethics does not want medical practice to maximize health and flourishing; it considers that quest to be a bad thing, not a good thing.
Bizarrely, instead of commentary on bioethics, current technology and "human dignity", there are seven essays arguing from the point of judeo-christian doctrine.
We read passages that assume the divine authorship of the Bible, that accept the literal truth of the miracles narrated in Genesis (such as the notion that the biblical patriarchs lived up to 900 years), that claim that divine revelation is a source of truth, that argue for the existence of an immaterial soul separate from the physiology of the brain, and that assert that the Old Testament is the only grounds for morality (for example, the article by Kass claims that respect for human life is rooted in Genesis 9:6, in which God instructs the survivors of his Flood in the code of vendetta: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God was man made").
Dr. Pinker is very concerned over the introduction of "Theocon Bioethics", a term I think he has likely invented.
Although the Dignity report presents itself as a scholarly deliberation of universal moral concerns, it springs from a movement to impose a radical political agenda, fed by fervent religious impulses, onto American biomedicine.
You should read the whole thing. Is this what our taxpayer dollars are going for? And whatever happened to the separation of church and state?
The sickness in theocon bioethics goes beyond imposing a Catholic agenda on a secular democracy and using "dignity" to condemn anything that gives someone the creeps. Ever since the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago, the panic sown by conservative bioethicists, amplified by a sensationalist press, has turned the public discussion of bioethics into a miasma of scientific illiteracy. Brave New World, a work of fiction, is treated as inerrant prophesy. Cloning is confused with resurrecting the dead or mass-producing babies. Longevity becomes "immortality," improvement becomes "perfection," the screening for disease genes becomes "designer babies" or even "reshaping the species."
....In every age, prophets foresee dystopias that never materialize, while failing to anticipate the real revolutions. Had there been a President's Council on Cyberethics in the 1960s, no doubt it would have decried the threat of the Internet, since it would inexorably lead to 1984, or to computers "taking over" like HAL in 2001. Conservative bioethicists presume to soothsay the outcome of the quintessentially unpredictable endeavor called scientific research. And they would stage-manage the kinds of social change that, in a free society, only emerge as hundreds of millions of people weigh the costs and benefits of new developments for themselves, adjusting their mores and dealing with specific harms as they arise, as they did with in vitro fertilization and the Internet.
Worst of all, theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.
I believe this 555 page reports is representative of a disturbing trend in conservative politics, the demonization of Science and scientists as exemplified by the Ben Stein fake-umentery Expelled, and by the increasing reactionariism of American conservative culture.
Here is entrepeneur/libertarian Peter Thiel in a Reason Magazine interview--
reason: What do you think are the most dangerous political trends in the United States?
Thiel: It seems like things are moving in a very anti-libertarian direction politically on every issue. There may be a few exceptions, but generally we’re moving toward a country that’s fiscally more liberal and socially more conservative, which is a very odd configuration. You can debate why that is. Maybe politics has become purely reactionary. It’s a reaction against progress, against globalization, against technology
.
The council's 555 document is basically a religious suppression of American technological innovation.
I think we should ask for our money back.