Arnold Kling has a must-read article on the arguments and implications of the last Kass Commission report on biotechnology. Arnold isn't a cheerleader for particular advances. He's raising more important questions about process, issues the Kass Commission's philosophers seem determine to dodge:
The Bioethics Council's report has been widely praised, at the symposium and elsewhere, for raising the critical issues and moving the debate forward. I do not see it that way. By concentrating on ends and ignoring means, the Council has ducked what I see as the most fundamental ethical issue of all, which is whether concerns over biotechnology scenarios warrant a worldwide totalitarian dictatorship. If, as I would argue, such a dictatorship would be more dystopian than any of the scenarios that technology might create, then the report is really a cop-out.
Some of the toughest issues in bioethics involve means as well as ends. Will we curb freedom at the level of research, the level of development and marketing, at the level of consumption, or at all three?
Under decentralized decision-making, we are going to continue in the direction of conscious genetic selection, new techniques for physical and mental enhancement, artificial mood creation, and greater health and longevity. We have been doing these things for thousands of years by cruder means, and we are not going to stop now in the absence of a complete social redesign. Such a social redesign strikes me as more frightening than the dangers that it proposes to avoid.
My guess is that people who live through the middle of this century will feel sharp pangs of sadness from the discontinuity that will develop between life as it is lived today and life as it is lived in future decades. This troubles me. However, as concerned as I am about where biotech is taking us, I would rather take my chances on muddling through those issues than endure the heavy-handed centralized control that I believe would be needed to slow the biotech revolution.
Read the whole thing. |
