Worrying About the “Bioethics Crisis.”

An article has been published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) entitled “Bioethics Crisis Looms Unless NIH Changes Course, Critics Warn,” byline Richard Monastersky. Bioethics crisis? Apparently, practitioners believe we need more bioethicists to tell us what to do in future biotechnological research. From the story:

The nation is adrift when it comes to the academic field of bioethics, according to two prominent medical officials, who call on the National Institutes of Health to chart a strategic plan for training more people in that area and for conducting more research into ethical aspects of medicine. The dearth of leadership and support for that work erodes public trust in government-supported medical-research programs, which pour billions of dollars into academic medical centers, according to the officials, who published two separate commentaries in the June issue of Academic Medicine.

Perhaps it isn’t a dearth of bioethicists but the policies and ideas that the mainstream movement promotes that causes the perceived loss of public trust.

Moreover, there are bioethicists and there are bioethicists. The President’s Council on Bioethics made several recommendations in the field—and other bioethicists, like Art Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania, screamed in opposition. Conversely, President Bill Clinton’s bioethics advisory panel took an essentially anything goes approach to the same issues. Two presidents, two panels, two different opinions.

The field was originally dominated by Paul Ramsey and Joseph Fletcher—and too more diametrically opposed thinkers could not be found. Today, Peter Singer is the world’s most famous bioethicist because he promotes infanticide and that equal consideration be given to animals in determining utilitarian outcomes. Yet the influential bioethicist Leon Kass, the former head of the President’s Council on Bioethics—would oppose those views. Who should we hearken to Singer or Kass?

I am not saying bioethics isn’t a useful field. But I am saying it is entirely subjective. It is also hyper political. Thus, while bioethicists can raise important and interesting issues for us to ponder, they can’t and shouldn’t be the deciders. Nobody gave them a monopoly to determine right from wrong.