Thursday, January 8, 2015

Bioethics needs philosophy

It is the JME's 40th anniversary and my 20th anniversary working in the field. I reflect on the nature of bioethics and medical ethics. I argue that both bioethics and medical ethics together have, in many ways, failed as fields. My diagnosis is that better philosophy is needed. I give some examples of the importance of philosophy to bioethics. I focus mostly on the failure of ethics in research and organ transplantation, although I also consider genetic selection, enhancement, cloning, futility, disability and other topics. I do not consider any topic comprehensively or systematically or address the many reasonable objections to my arguments. Rather, I seek to illustrate why philosophical analysis and argument remain as important as ever to progress in bioethics and medical ethics. Julian Savalescu

Coercion, discrimination and why medical ethics needs philosophy, better philosophy

Objecting to genetic selection and cloning, Leon Kass writes,A third objection, centered around issues of freedom and coercion… comes closer to the mark. … [T]here are always dangers of despotism within families, as parents already work their wills on their children with insufficient regard to a child's independence or real needs. Even partial control over genotype—say, to take a relatively innocent example, musician parents selecting a child with genes for perfect pitch—would add to existing social instruments of parental control and its risks of despotic rule. This is indeed one of the central arguments against human cloning: the charge of genetic despotism of one generation over the next.1
This objection from ‘coercion’ is the objection that Michael Sandel gives to genetic selection, which he calls ‘hyper-parenting’.2 In a similar vein, Jürgen Habermas argues that germline enhancements would represent a threat to the enhanced child's freedom because the parent's choice of enhancements would not only imply their endorsement of particular goods, but also communicate to their child that they expect her to pursue those goods.3 These expectations, Habermas suggests, may serve to hinder the child's freedom to do what she wants, when her desires do not align with her parent's expectations.4
The paradigm case of coercion could be said to be when a robber stops you and says, ‘Your money or your life’. Coercion involves the restriction of freedom (reduction of options), which causes that person to do what she does not want to do. Coercion is wrong when it harms a person or fails to respect that person's autonomy. That is a conceptual analysis of coercion.
Even professionals working in bioethics (which includes medical ethics), including Leon Kass, misuse this term. Embryos cannot be coerced since they are not persons and lack freedom of will. But more importantly, future people cannot be coerced by the act of genetic selection or cloning. Imagine that IVF produces two embryos, Anne and Bob. The parents choose Bob because that embryo has perfect pitch (or is a clone). Later in life, can Bob complain that his parents coerced or limited his freedom by selecting him on the basis of having perfect pitch (or being a clone)? No—he owes his very existence (all his options and freedom) to their act of selection. Without assisted reproduction and selection (or cloning), he would not have existed. It is metaphysical fact that those who owe their existence to a reproductive act cannot be coerced by that act. Even more broadly, they cannot be harmed by that act unless it makes their existence so bad that their lives are not worth living.
Failure to appreciate this metaphysical fact about identity-determining reproductive acts infects legislation and policy...
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  1. Professor Julian Savulescu, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Suite 8, Littlegate House, Oxford OX1 1PT, UK; julian.savulescu@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

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