I admit that I haven’t followed the recent controversies over the Presidential Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass and changes in personnel. But I did read with interest, this review of a book of analysis from the Council, edited by Kass, and reviewed here by Edward Rothstein.

Many council sessions (www.bioethics.gov/transcripts/transcripttopic.html) involve more traditional material: comments by visiting scientists, medical advocacy groups and biotech representatives; debates about cloning or aging; summaries of recent research. But the problem, Mr. Kass suggests in the introduction, is that bioethics now has its own orthodoxy. The major principles used to assess the ethical status of biological research, Mr. Kass argues, are beneficence, respect and justice. He writes: “So long as no one is hurt, no one’s will is violated, and no one is excluded or discriminated against, there may be little to worry about.”

This is overstated, perhaps, since ethics committees at biotech companies and hospitals must know that other concerns exist. But Mr. Kass wants those other concerns at the center, not at the margins. The real problem with human cloning or with drugs that might one day extend life and postpone death, he argues, is that they will change fundamental aspects of being human: the way the course of life unfolds, how sufferings are endured, whether children are eagerly sought, whether humanity retains its special status. That is what this anthology implicitly argues.

The human is the terrain over which the battles are being fought. The political problem with the manufacture of human embryos, however early in their development, is not just that it upsets opponents of abortion. It is that it shifts a barrier that might become porous, weakening the sacral quality of the human. And once that takes place, the slippery slope becomes far more slippery. Where are lines to be drawn? Will human life forms ultimately be harvested for the sake of other humans?

I was glad to see a piece treating this concerns with the respect they deserve, rather than merely dismissing them as right-wing attempts to stop progress and enlightenment.

More here, on a different angle of reflection, but in relation to the same group