1. As athletic enhancement increases, what fades?
2. Does Sandel think the main problem with enhancement is that it undermines effort and erodes human agency?
3. What do genetically altered athletes corrupt?
4. Sandel thinks Lasik surgery to correct normal vision would be an acceptable enhancement for a golfer under what condition?
5. Does Sandel allege an ethical problem with mega-calorie diets?
6. What is "far-fetched" about the view that the rules of a game are arbitrary?
1. A devil's advocate might say, of the complaint that an enhanced performance is less impressive, that if it's so easy to hit 70+ home runs on steroids then more than just two should have been able to do it. The implication is that, enhanced or not, elite athletic accomplishment is entertaining and exceptional. What do you think?
2. Do you agree that we should be a more humble and less "promethean" species, more appreciative of the gift of life and less willful, less confident in our ability to "remake nature, including human nature"?
3. "Striving is not the point of sports; excellence is." (28) Agree? Were McGwire's and Bonds's achievements less excellent than Ruth's and Maris's?
4. Is it clear to you where we should draw the line between "natural gifts" and artificial enhancements? Isn't medical science an expression of culture, itself in turn a natural evolutionary adaptation on the part of our species? Aren't nature and culture on the same continuum? Or does this attitude extend a blank check for any and every humanly engendered aleration as equally "natural"?
5. Do transfusions, hormone injecctions (EPOs), altitude training, and genetic modifications all share the same ethical status, if their effect on performance is the same? 33
6. What threatens "the integrity of [a] game"?
...today’s always a gift, and that’s why we call it the present. Dare we open it? (No peeking? How about peak experiencing?)
Gift is Michael Sandel’s keyword in today’s Bioethics chapter, too, as his
Case Against Perfection continues in chapter two. He’s an
anti-doping anti-perfectionist (with the world’s most popular
course on justice), worried that we’ll design ourselves right out of the possibility of accomplishing
our own goals and, ultimately, achieving meaningful lives.
“Bionic Athletes,” enhanced by various means (not restricted to pharmaceuticals), have looked the gifthorse of natural (some will say “god-given”) athleticism in the mouth (he says). They’ve corrupted their respective sports and compromised our capacity to appreciate their gifts and their games.
So what? Games are only, well, games. Arbitrary, unimportant, meaningless. Right?
Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not the central argument here. Let me just say, though, that I’ve experienced at least a few glorious afternoons in the bleachers that felt anything but “meaningless” – they felt like what James Carse calls “
infinte games,” played for their own sake and experienced as ends in themselves. Never mind, though, for now.
Sandel’s clear insinuation is that we’re in danger of killing the biggest game of all, the game of life. If we make winning by all means the only thing, we’ll be robbing life of intrinsic interest, meaning, joy. Joie de vivre is the greatest gift; the dopers and cheaters and transhumanist dreamers may yet prove to be our greatest killjoys.
The deeper danger of enhancement and genetic engineering is that they represent a kind of hyper-agency, a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires.
At stake, Sandel says, is “an appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements.” Such appreciation reflects a “religious sensibility” that is grateful but humble, and not so presumptuous as to try and replicate those powers. Hmmm.
Do nature’s gifts require and reward such self-abnegating gratitude? Does the “religion of humanity”?
There follows an interesting comparison, interesting at least to baseball fans, of Pete Rose and Joe DiMaggio.
Then, a surprising and at least overstated (probably false) claim: “striving is not the point of sports; excellence is.” I think Sandel really does not want to say that, does not mean what his words may convey. He wants to block the kind of ambitious striving that lusts after (say) seven medals at the Tour de France, or 73 suspiciously -amped Home Runs, or a shortcut to the marathon finish line. But surely he does not oppose striving against one’s own previous limitations to overcome internal resistance and achieve more than we knew we could.
Don’t some admirable athletes (and humans in general) possess a gift for striving?
I do think Sandel’s right to point out that “success” in baseball must continue to mean a 70% (or so) failure rate, in order to sustain our interest. I also agree that Judge Scalia is full of peanuts when he calls all rules “arbitrary.”
Richard Powers’ Generosity: An Enhancement (Part Two: “Walk on Air”) also raises crucial questions about the genetic gift of a sweet and happy disposition, and how well- or ill-advised we and our heirs might be to experiment with re-gifting happiness via biogenetic interventions and therapies. There are “big winners in genetics’ happiness roulette” (the biggest are hyperthymic, “every day bathed in renewable elation”) and relative losers. It’s not fair. Can we level the playing field? Can “peak experience” be packaged and sold?
A few highlights from today’s Generosity:
People want to live longer and better. When they can do both, they will. Ethics is just going to have to catch up.
…we might still become the authors of our own lives.
One glance at the only available planetary future made having children at best
benighted and at worst depraved. Nulliparity— human build-down— was a moral imperative… she was already a member of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
Resolved: the human race would have been better off if the agricultural revolution had never happened. Resolved: the government should cap the salaries of professional athletes… Resolved: the human race will not survive its own ingenuity. Resolved: the cure for our chronic despair is just around the corner… Tonia Schiff can make the most cataclysmic debate almost as entertaining as reality itself.
Candace helps students understand that feeling good about themselves is more important than being “perfect…”
It took the species millions of years to climb down out of the trees, and only ten years more to jump into the fishbowl.
“If I knew a drug that produced sustained, intense, level, loving well-being without any trace of stupor or edge, I’d take it myself.” She cocked her head and twisted her lips. “You’d have to. Everyone else would already be on it.”
You have cause — so have we all — of joy.
Does generous [heart, joie, expansion, big feeling] include all those who are by nature genuine, generative, anyone pregnant with connections, keen to make more kin?
Or is generosity a question of having the right blood, the innate germ of the genteel gentry?
Enough philosophy; she has sworn off it. Philosophy never consoled anyone.
I’d spent my whole life coming here, and now I was home. Everyone alive deserves to feel that way once.
Only once?
And so we’re off to BNA. Happy flight, kids. Walk on air.
Today in Bioethics we'll talk "research." Things like clinical trials and research involving animals and their rights, and genetics, and epidemiology. We'll look at the funding gap between what we need to cure and where our research dollars are actually going, and at the moral imperative of genuine and informed consent. We'll look at disturbing instances of fraudulent and dishonest research. And we'll consider Peter Singer's claims about "speciesism."
The future of research is a daunting source of apprehension and speculation. Michael Sandel and Bill McKibben have aired serious concerns about genetic and other "enhancement" research as potentially catastrophic for our capacity to achieve or even recognize "meaningful" lives. Enhanced may not mean improved.
1. Name one of the basic requirements agreed upon by all codes devised to protect individuals from malicious research.
2. What decree states that consent must be gained in all experimentation with human beings?
3. Name one of four areas of research discussed in the book.
4. Which famous contemporary philosopher coined the term speciesism?
5. Name one of four R's used in international legislation pertaining to animal rights in research?
6. What is the term for altering the numbers in a calculation to make the hypothesis more convincing, with no justification form the research findings for such members?
BONUS: What is the "10/90 Gap"?
DQ:
- Can there really ever be "fully informed" voluntary consent, given the many unknown variables and unpredicted consequences involved in most research?
- Discuss: "Trials of pharmaceuticals may be driven as much by commercial considerations as by the likelihood of real therapeutic gain." 122
- What concerns do you have about the use of animals in medical research? Is speciesism one of them? 10 medical breakthroughs due to animal testing... PETA... Touring an animal research facility
- What limits, if any, would you like to see imposed on genetic research and the uses to which it may be put?
- Were ethical improprieties committed in the case of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells (HELA cells) were harvested without her consent? (Rebecca Skloot... BBC...CBS...)
- If "dreams of perfect health by the better-off will determine the research agenda" in the future, resulting in soaring health care costs and greater health "enhancement" opportunities for the wealthy, what should be done to insure adequate attention to "the health problems of most of the world's population"? 129
- Should we be worried about a "Prozac revolution" and a "brave new world" of somatically-induced apathetic bliss? 130
- Would you give special priority to any of Campbell's five enhancement categories (130)? Is "Transcendence"-style enhancement beyond the realm of reasonable concern (given the considerable monied interest of people like Larry Page)?
- Comment: "Why would we want such a 'posthuman' future? Are our lives better if we become physically stronger or more agile, or have an increased intelligence, or live for centuries?" 131
- Is the outsourcing of clinical drug trials to developing countries ethically defensible? 132
- How would you propose making research priorities "aligned to the needs of the majority"? 133
- Is it likely that biobanks and other communitarian initiatives will in the future "prioritize health research according to need rather than profit," particularly in the U.S.? Would you support such a reprioritizing? How?
- Have you seen Sicko? Care to share a review? Or of Michael Moore's latest doc'y?
==Also of note:
To enhance our SuperBowl experience-
It's the birthday of the first woman to graduate from medical school, Elizabeth Blackwell, born on this day in Bristol, England, in 1821. She wanted to become a doctor because she knew that many women would rather discuss their health problems with another woman. She read medical texts and studied with doctors, but she was rejected by all the big medical schools. Finally the Geneva Medical College (which became Hobart College) in upstate New York accepted her. The faculty wasn't sure what to do with such a qualified candidate, and so they turned the decision over to the students. The male students voted unanimously to accept her. Her classmates and even professors considered many medical subjects too delicate for a woman, and didn't think she should be allowed to attend lectures on the reproductive system. But she graduated, became a doctor, and opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. WA Feb3