Each year the Center for Bioethics and Culture asks me to prognosticate about the coming year. This year, that duty is painful. I believe we are entering dark days. But it is my job to call them as I see them without honey coating. (This is an abridged version. For more details read the original article.) I predict:
Biotechnology:I have been asked privately why I would be so publicly pessimistic, even if realistic, in this prediction. The worry is that people might get discouraged. Perhaps, but I hope it will wake people up! I am so tired of hearing, “It can’t happen here,” that the time has come for all to understand that not only can it happen here, it is happening now. It is now or never to defend the ramparts!
— The Bush Embryonic Stem Cell Funding Policy is Toast...
— The Amount of Federal Funding of Human ESCR Will Remain Roughly the Same...
— New Federal Law Will Explicitly Legalize Therapeutic Cloning...
— The Federal Government Will Not Fund Human Cloning in 2000;
Assisted Suicide:
— Washington Assisted Suicide Will Quickly Seem Routine...Any abuses or problems that come to light in WA, will, as in Oregon, be ignored by state authorities and go mostly unreported by the media.
— The Montana Supreme Court will Create a Constitutional Right to Assisted Suicide...
— At Least One State Legislature Will Vote to Legalize Assisted Suicide: Look for Hawaii, California, and/or Vermont to legalize assisted suicide through the legislative process.
Miscellaneous:
— Abortion: The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)—which would erase all state laws limiting abortion—will be fought tooth and tong by the pro life movement. It will not pass in 2009...
— Conscience Clauses:...The Bush Administration passed a regulation at the end of his term protecting such dissenting health care workers from being discriminated against in employment for hearkening to the call of conscience. Look for this rule to be overturned by the Obama Administration, or overturned by legislation...
— Human Exceptionalism: Timing is uncertain, but look for the European Court of Human Rights to declare that chimpanzees are legal persons in Europe, perhaps this year, but almost certainly by the end of 2010...
— Futile Care: Texas will not rescind its law legalizing medical futility in 2009...
— Biological Colonialism: Alas, despite legal attempts to restrict the exploitation of the world’s destitute for their body parts, biological colonialism (such as buying organs), will increase in 2009.
If you’d also like to listen to my predictions, check out the current edition of my podcast, What It Means to Be Human and you can download it into your MP 3.
