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The limits of bioethics: Where the profession ends and politics begins

By Alliance Alert

Sally Satel writing in the Hoover Institution's Policy Review: "Does being a bioethicist entitle one to any such moral authority, edifying the rest of us about right and wrong? Is this what society should expect of its 'ethics experts'? . . . It is hard to gauge how much impact organized bioethics has had on society. If the activist wing closed up shop and the pundits went home, it is doubtful they would be missed. But one hopes that at least its scholarly and didactic entities will live on. With our growing technical capacity to manipulate our biology and thus our destiny, biomedical dilemmas will certainly increase in number and in difficulty, and they will require as much thoughtful attention as they can get. But social justice should be left to others ? to the rest of us. The more bioethics promotes an agenda of social or economic reform, the more it betrays itself to be politics by other means."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on February 10, 2010 (boomark / email).