January 16, 2004

134 Pages·2015·0.71 MB·English

Bioethics Research Library at Georgetown University
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Transcripts of the President’s Council on
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About Us
January 16, 2004
Meetings
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Wyndham Hotel
Transcripts 1400 M Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20005
Background
Materials
COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT
Former Bioethics
Commissions
Leon R. Kass, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman
American Enterprise Institute

Rebecca S. Dresser, J.D.
Washington University School of Law
Daniel W. Foster, M.D.
University of Texas, Southwestern Medical School
Francis Fukuyama, Ph.D.
Johns Hopkins University
Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D.
Dartmouth College
Robert P. George, D.Phil., J.D.
Princeton University
Mary Ann Glendon, J.D., L.L.M
Harvard University
Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, Dr. phil.
Georgetown University
William B. Hurlbut, M.D.
Stanford University
Charles Krauthammer, M.D.
Syndicated Columnist
William F. May, Ph.D.
Southern Methodist University
Paul McHugh, M.D.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Gilbert C. Meilaender, Ph.D.
Valparaiso University
Janet D. Rowley, M.D., D.Sc.
The University of Chicago
Michael J. Sandel, D.Phil.
Harvard University
INDEX
Session 5: Toward a "Richer Bioethics" Council's Report to the President
Release of "Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on
Bioethics"
Session 6: Discussion of the Council's Future Work
Public Comments
SESSION 5: TOWARD A "RICHER BIOETHICS"
COUNCIL'S REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT
CHAIRMAN KASS: Good morning. We should get started. This is the fifth session of the meeting
devoted toward our project, "Toward a Richer Bioethics," celebrating the release of our — let's call it
a report — fourth book, Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics.
This has been a relatively invisible project of the Council in the sense that it has been the subject of
no formal Council discussions, though Council members have been consulted at all stages of the
process to make suggestions of readings. And, in fact, some of the readings in this volume have been
explicitly discussed. And probably 10 of the 95 have appeared either in comments made in the
meetings or in previous publications.
This is a most unusual document for any government body to produce. And I think it probably
deserves some justification, but I don't want to steal time from the discussion that we are going to
have here this morning. The justification for it is given in the Chairman's introduction to the
volume.
And although we are not anything like a congressional committee, if members won't mind, I would
like to just insert some of those remarks into the record so they will be part of the official record of
this meeting. The people in the audience have a copy of the text; they can read it for themselves.
I think the Council members know why we care about this subject. Questions of bioethics very often
come to touch the deepest issues of our humanity. And the readings from the humanities are among
the best resources we have for thinking about those things and addressing those questions.
Before turning to the panel, I simply want to acknowledge the extraordinary work of our director of
education, Rachel Wildavsky, who collected these essays, who served as the general editor of this
volume. Rachel, we're in your debt for a really, really beautiful project.
(Applause.)
(Chairman Kass asked and received unanimous consent to insert into the record the following
prepared remarks, taken from his introduction to Being Human.)
BEING HUMAN:
AN INTRODUCTION
by Leon R. Kass, M.D.
Chairman, President’s Council on Bioethics
Why another thick book about bioethics? Why a bioethics reader? Why a reader on Being Human?
And why a reader on being human from the President’s Council on Bioethics? The short answer is
this: The Council believes that readings of the sort offered here can contribute to a richer
understanding and deeper appreciation of our humanity, necessary for facing the challenges
confronting us in a biotechnological age. The longer answer constitutes our introduction to this
volume.
We begin at the beginning: What is “bioethics,” and why do we need it? Bioethics is a relatively
young area of concern and field of inquiry, less than forty years old in its present incarnation—
though many of the questions it leads to are in fact ancient. In the mid-1960s, following the
disclosure of several abuses here and abroad, ethical attention first focused on the use of human
subjects in medical experimentation. Intense public discussion established the importance of
voluntary and informed consent, and institutional arrangements were subsequently developed to
protect vulnerable patients against the potentially excessive zeal of otherwise worthy experimenters.
Around the same time, it also became clear that advances in biomedical science and technology were
raising—and would increasingly raise—more far-reaching and profound challenges to familiar
human practices and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
By 1970, the effects of the so-called biological revolution were beginning to be felt. Oral
contraceptives, tranquilizers, and psychedelic drugs were in use, as were cardiac pacemakers,
respirators, and kidney dialysis machines. In vitro fertilization of human egg by human sperm had
just been achieved and the first heart transplant had just been performed. People were developing a
new “definition of death” that looked to brain activity rather than heartbeat or spontaneous
breathing as the definitive sign of existing life. Scientists had discovered a “pleasure center” in the
brain, and were exploring possible uses of implanted electrodes in this area for purposes of behavior
therapy and control. Genetic screening and pre-natal diagnosis had just arrived, and scientific
conferences were being held about coming prospects for gene therapy and even about genetically
engineered improvements in the human race. There was great excitement about using the new
knowledge and techniques to cure disease, overcome infertility, treat mental illness, and relieve
much human suffering. Yet at the same time, people sensed that the new possibilities for intervening
into the human body and mind would likely raise large questions, not only about safety and efficacy
but also about human freedom and dignity, human self-understanding, and the kind of society we
were bringing into being. No one had yet heard of bioethics or bioethicists. But their time had
arrived.
Actually, the word “bioethics” was coined in 1970 by the biologist Van Rensselaer Potter—to
designate a “new ethics” to be built not on philosophical or religious foundations but on the
supposedly more solid ground of modern biology. But the term soon came rather to denote a domain
of inquiry that examines the ethical implications of advances in biomedical science and technology
for everyday life, as well as for law, social institutions, and public policy. Today, “bioethics” also
names a specialized academic discipline, granting degrees in major universities and credentialing its
practitioners as professional experts in the field.
Over the past thirty years, the field of bioethics has mushroomed. It has entertained discussions and
debates on moral and policy issues connected with abortion, fetal tissue implantation, genetic
screening (and privacy and discrimination), assisted reproductive technologies, surrogate
motherhood, embryo and stem cell research, cloning, gene therapy and genetic “enhancement,” the
use of mechanical hearts or animal organs in transplantation, the use of performance-enhancing
drugs in athletics or psychotropic drugs for modifying and controlling behavior, living wills and “Do
Not Resuscitate” orders, assisted suicide and euthanasia, and the merits of hospice care—among
many, many others. Ongoing attention to research with human subjects has further refined the
principles and procedures needed to safeguard subjects’ rights and well-being. Hospital-based ethics
committees have been established to deal with difficult end-of-life issues regarding termination of
treatment. Professional societies and biotechnology companies employ ethics committees to address
specific issues as they arise—say, about whether to practice sex-selection, or how to insure fair access
to the fruits of biotechnical innovation. Federal legislation has been enacted both to facilitate organ
transplantation and to ban the buying and selling of the organs themselves. Debates continue
regarding remedies for the inequities of heath care in the United States or the virtual absence of
health care and public health measures in underdeveloped countries abroad. Today, bioethicists
teach at most medical schools and universities, advise governments and corporations, and appear
frequently in the media. Hardly a day passes without some topic of bioethical significance appearing
on the front pages of the newspapers. And the President’s Council on Bioethics is but the latest in a
series of national bioethics commissions charged with offering advice about this entire set of
developments. Bioethics business is booming, and deservedly so, for there is much of importance at
stake.
In creating this Council, President George W. Bush gave us a broad mandate and, among other
charges, a somewhat unusual responsibility: “to conduct fundamental inquiry into the human and
moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and technology.” We are
also charged “to facilitate a greater understanding of bioethical issues.” Yet, as the Council noted
when we first convened in January 2002, many of the deep and broad human implications of the
coming age of biotechnology are not today receiving adequate attention. Perhaps it is because the
field is so busy attending to the novel problems that emerge almost daily. Perhaps it is because
attention to devising guidelines and regulations leaves little time to reflect on the full range of
human goods that we should be trying to promote or protect. But it may also be that the concerns
and concepts that have come to dominate the discussions of academic and public bioethics, for all
their strengths, do not by themselves get to the deepest reaches of our subject.
The major principles of professionalized bioethics, according to the leading textbook in the field, are
these: (1) beneficence (or at least “non-maleficence”—in plain English: “do no harm”), (2) respect for
persons, and (3) justice. As applied to particular cases, these principles translate mainly into
concerns to avoid bodily harm and to do bodily good, to respect patient autonomy and to secure
informed consent, and to promote equal access to health care and to provide equal protection
against biohazards. 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. Fitting well with our society’s devotion to
health, freedom, and equality, this outlook governs much of today’s public bioethical discourse.
Thus, we worry much that human cloning may be unsafe, but little about what it might mean for the
relations between the generations should children arise not from the coupling of two but from the
replication of one or should procreation come to be seen as manufacture. We worry much about
genetic privacy and genetic discrimination, but little about acquiring godlike powers of deciding
which genetic defects disqualify one for birth or about how we will regard our own identity should
we come to be defined as largely a collection of genes. We worry much about issues of safety or
unfairness when athletes use steroids or college students take stimulants, but little about the way
these (and other mediating) technologies might distort the character of human activity, severing
performance from effort or pleasure from the activity that ordinarily is its foundation. We worry
much about the obstacles to living longer, but little about the relation between trying to live longer
and living well.
In a word, we are quick to notice dangers to life, threats to freedom, and risks of discrimination or
exploitation. But we are slow to think about the need to uphold human dignity and the many ways of
doing and feeling and being in the world that make human life rich, deep, and fulfilling. Indeed, it
sometimes seems as though our views of the meaning of our humanity have been so transformed by
the technological approach to the world that we may be in danger of forgetting what we have to lose,
humanly speaking.
To enlarge our vision and deepen our understanding, we need to focus not only on the astonishing
new technologies but also on those (in truth, equally astonishing) aspects of “being human” on
which the technologies impinge and which they may serve or threaten. For bioethical dilemmas,
though generated by novel developments in biomedical science and technology, are not themselves
scientific or technological matters. They are human dilemmas—individual, familial, social, political,
and spiritual—confronted by human beings at various stages in the human lifespan, embedded in
networks of meaning and relation, and informed by varying opinions and beliefs about better and
worse, right and wrong, and how we are to live. Often, competing human goods are at stake (for
example, seeking cures for disease versus respecting nascent life); in other cases, the evils we seek to
avoid are deeply intertwined with the goods we ardently pursue (for example, eliminating genetic
defects without stigmatizing those who have them). Moreover, both in practice and in our self-
understanding, bioethical issues generally touch matters close to the core of our humanity: birth and
death, body and mind, sickness and health, sex and procreation, love and family, identity and
individuality, freedom and dignity, aspiration and contentment, the purposes of knowledge, the aim
of technology, the meaning of suffering, the quest for meaning. A richer bioethics would attend to
these matters directly and keep them central to all bioethical inquiry and judgment. A richer
bioethics would feature careful and wisdom-seeking reflection regarding the full range of human
goods at stake in bioethical dilemmas.
In all of its work to date, the President’s Council on Bioethics has tried to practice and foster such an
approach. For the Council, “bioethics” is not an ethics based on biology, but an ethics in the service
of bios—of a life lived humanly, a course of life lived not merely physiologically, but also mentally,
socially, culturally, politically, and spiritually. Even as we have tackled specific issues such as human
cloning or the uses of biotechnology that lie “beyond therapy,” we have sought to probe the
meanings of the intersections of biology and biography, where life as lived experientially encounters
the results of life studied scientifically. We have sought as best we can to clarify, promote, and
defend “being human.”
Where might we seek help in thinking about “life lived humanly,” about birth and death, freedom
and dignity, the meaning of suffering, or any of the other marks of a genuinely human experience?
Since the beginnings of human self-consciousness, these matters have been the subjects of
humanistic reflection and writing, capturing the attentions of great thinkers and authors. Works of
history, philosophy, poetry, imaginative literature, and religious meditation have pondered and
commented upon—and continue to ponder and comment upon—these matters. In the Council’s own
discussions and reports, we have on several occasions looked to these works for their insights and
instruction (roughly a dozen of the works included in this volume have explicitly entered the
conversations at our meetings or the pages of our writings). And each of us individually, explicitly or
tacitly, relies on what we have learned throughout our lives from texts such as these, as we grapple
with the difficult bioethical issues before us. Early recognizing the value of such readings, we have
featured many selections “From Our Bookshelf” on the Council’s website (www.bioethics.gov). Now,
“to facilitate a greater understanding of bioethical issues,” we have collected and organized them in
this volume in the hope that others may discover for themselves the help that is available from wise,
sensitive, and thoughtful authors, many of whom come from other times and places. As we strive to
stay human in the age of biotechnology in ever-better and fuller ways, we must take whatever help
we can get in deepening our appreciation of “being human.”
We do not offer these readings as authoritative or as authorities. As readers will discover, they differ
too much among themselves to constitute any single coherent teaching. Rather, we offer them in the
wisdom-seeking—rather than wisdom-delivering—spirit, as writings that make us think, that
challenge our unexamined opinions, expand our sympathies, elevate our gaze, and illuminate
important aspects of our lives that we have insufficiently understood or appreciated.
Each reading is accompanied by a brief introduction directing readers toward the bioethical
implications of the text, not by drawing conclusions but by asking questions. As any teacher knows,
most good books do not teach themselves. We are all frequently lazy readers, who pass off what is
puzzling or unfamiliar, and, even worse, who fail to see the depth in what is, by contrast, familiar
and congenial. Often our prejudices get in the way. Sometimes, our inexperience blinds us to crucial
subtleties and nuances. Accordingly, we have prefaced each reading with some observations and
questions designed to make for more active and discerning reading. These questions should be
suitable for discussion by groups reading together or for study by individuals reading alone. In some
cases, where the text seemed more remote or where we thought it helpful, we have taken a more
didactic tone, asking the reader to come at the text with certain questions and concerns in mind. We
have done this with mixed feelings; we do not wish to get between author and reader, nor do we wish
to imperil understanding of texts written by subtler and greater minds because of our limited
understandings and specialized concerns. We thus encourage the readers to use the introductions if
they find them helpful, but to treat them with the proverbial grain of salt.
Readers will note, though, that in our choice of readings we have not excluded texts that evince
strong moral viewpoints or that are rooted in particular religious faiths. We have welcomed all
valuable anthropological or moral insights, regardless of whether they are rooted in religious faith,
philosophy, or ordinary personal experience. Respect for American pluralism does not mean
excluding deeply held religious (or non-religious) viewpoints or sensibilities. On the contrary, with
the deepest human questions on the table, we should be eager to avail ourselves of the wisdom
contained in all the great religious, literary, and philosophical traditions.
One of the virtues of an anthology is that readers are free to pick and choose what they wish to read,
skipping around in no particular order. Yet, as we will now indicate—and as the introductions to
each of the chapters will make even clearer—there is method in our ordering, and we think there is
additional advantage in following the text straight through.
It remains, therefore, only to sketch the structure of this volume. The (ninety-five) readings are
divided into ten chapters; each chapter opens with a brief introduction, setting forth the topic at
hand and providing a synoptic view of the readings that follow. The ten chapters are in turn
arranged in three sections.
The first section, “Natural Imperfection and Human Longing,” introduces a central human question
that lurks beneath the surface of many bioethical issues: Which is the proper human attitude or
disposition in the world: molding or beholding? When and to what extent should we strive to change
and alter nature and especially our own given nature, in an effort to improve or save it? When and to
what extent should we strive to accept and appreciate nature and our own given nature, in an effort
to know or savor it? This section, comprising three chapters, also introduces the means we have for
acting upon these dueling impulses and longings: biomedical science and the art of medicine, both
major players in the dramas of bioethics today.
In Chapter One, “The Search for Perfection,” readings explore the age-old human aspiration to
improve our native lot, removing our imperfections and bringing our nature closer to our ideal. Does
our flourishing depend on our ability to better our form and function? Or does it depend, conversely,
on our ability to accept and even celebrate our natural limitations?
In Chapter Two, “Scientific Aspirations,” readings from biographies and memoirs of great scientists
explore the motives and goals of scientific activity. Both as a mode of inquiry and as a body of
knowledge, science has served both human aspirations—beholding and molding—although its utility
as the basis of technological innovation is one of the central features of modern science. Yet science
is also a human—and ethical—activity, the fulfillment of personal human desires. How do scientists
themselves see the relation between theory and practice? What guides their own scientific quest?
In Chapter Three, “To Heal Sometimes, To Comfort Always,” we turn from the pursuit of knowledge
to the age-old medical dream: by means of such knowledge, to bring healing to the sick and
wholeness to the broken, and, in the limit, to perfect our vulnerable and mortal human bodies.
Readings explore the purposes of medicine, seen from the perspective of doctor and patient, and
examine a vocation not only to heal but also to care and comfort.
The second section, “The Human Being and the Life Cycle,” moves from aspirations of and for
human beings to questions about human nature itself: What is a human being? And what sort of a
life have we human beings been given to live? The four chapters comprising this section treat various
aspects of these anthropological questions, many of them sorely neglected in much current
bioethical discourse: the meaning for our identity of our embodiment; the tension between change
and stability as we progress through the life cycle; the place of begetting and belonging in human
flourishing, as we live with ancestors and descendants; and the meaning of mortality as the ultimate
boundary of any human life. The relevance of these topics to contemporary bioethical arenas such as
organ transplantation, assisted reproduction and genetic screening, and research to alter aging and
the human lifespan needs only to be mentioned to be seen.
In Chapter Four, “Are We Our Bodies?” readings explore the puzzling question about the relation
between our bodies and our minds (or souls). Are we mostly one or the other? Are we rather only the
two of them together? How are our lofty aspirations related to our “fleshiness”? How crucial is our
body to our identity and worth?
In Chapter Five, “Many Stages, One Life,” readings ponder what it means that we live in time, that
we both change constantly yet continue always as “ourselves.” Is there a shape or meaning to our
temporal journey? What sense are we supposed to make of life’s various “stages”? What unites the
beginning of our lives with its end?
In Chapter Six, “Among the Generations,” we move from the life cycle of individuals to their
connections to those who came before and those who come after. Readings explore the experience
and significance of human procreation and renewal, as well as our obligations to ancestors and
descendants. How important are biological ties to the work of human parenting and perpetuation?
What is the significance of the family tree? What do the various branches owe to one another?
In Chapter Seven, “Why Not Immortality?” we move from procreation to a more radical response to
our finitude: the quest for personal immortality. The readings consider various expressions of, and
responses to, this ancient human longing. How does this longing affect the way we spend the time of
our lives? What does it imply regarding the goodness of terrestrial life? Is mortality only a burden or
also a blessing? Does the answer depend on the truth about an afterlife? Would our longing for
immortality be satisfied by having “more of the same”? Do we long for an endless existence or for a
perfected one?
The third section, “Cures, Improvements, and Their Costs: Virtues for a Richer Bioethics,” moves
from the anthropological questions to the ethical and spiritual ones, with a special eye on possible
excellences that may be enhanced or threatened in the age of biotechnology. The three chapters in
this section deal with some of the deepest bioethical questions: the value, if any, of vulnerability and
suffering; the importance, for living well, of unmediated and direct engagement with the world and
with our fellow creatures; and the character of human dignity. Once again, these are matters that
tend to be neglected in current bioethical discussions. Yet on reflection, their centrality is not
difficult to recognize, especially in such matters as our use of heroic measures to save and extend
life, our increased reliance on psychotropic drugs to handle the trials and tribulations of life, or our
attempts to describe and explain human life and human freedom solely in terms of genes, hormones,
or neurotransmitters.
In Chapter Eight, “Vulnerability and Suffering,” the readings consider the venerable question of why
we suffer, and the further question of whether there is anything to be said on suffering’s behalf.
Would eliminating all suffering be humanly desirable? Could it be that some forms of suffering are
essential to our identities and our dignity? Or is this just a rationalizing effort, to make—quite
literally—a virtue out of necessity?
In Chapter Nine, “Living Immediately,” the readings look closely at the character of human activities
when these are engaged in at their peak. Of special interest are instances when we can be at-work in
the world wholeheartedly and immediately, unencumbered by pain and suffering and not deflected
by technological or other “intermediaries.” How can we take advantage of the powers technology
bestows on us without hazarding distortions of the very activities these powers are meant to serve?
What is required for genuine encounters with the world and with other people—for what some call
“real life”—and what are the obstacles to their achievement?
Finally, in Chapter Ten, “Human Dignity,” we turn explicitly to the theme that has been tacitly
present throughout the volume: the dignity or worth or standing of the human creature. Though the
term, “human dignity,” has a lofty ring, its content is quite difficult to define. Or rather, to be more
precise, many different authors and traditions define it differently, as the readings in this chapter
make abundantly clear. Yet they are all struggling to reveal that elusive core of our humanity, those
special qualities that make us more than beasts yet less than gods, the encouragement and defense of
which may be said, arguably, to be the highest mission of a richer bioethics. Some readings will do so
by argument, others by presenting instances and exemplars. Taken together, they should help us see
the profoundly special character of human beings and the special virtue to which we may rise—with
and without the help of biotechnology.

End of Chairman Kass's inserted remarks.
CHAIRMAN KASS: To celebrate the release of this volume but also to subject our enterprise to
some critical scrutiny, we have convened a really wonderful panel this morning to discuss with us
the role of the humanities in bioethics.
We have, first of all, Professor Bruce Cole, distinguished art historian specializing in the Renaissance,
with a keen eye for being human, who is now the eloquent Chairman of the National Endowment for
the Humanities, the country's leading voice on the importance of the humanities for our general
culture.
We have Professor Paul Cantor from the University of Virginia, a long and distinguished career as a
teacher of literature who almost 20 years ago, I believe, did a book on the creator and creature on
the romantic myths, including the discussion of Frankenstein.
Then we have Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, who is now Professor emeritus of medicine and medical ethics
at the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University School of Medicine. I think it is fair to
say that Ed Pellegrino has, for more than 50 years, been the most visible and most eloquent
exemplar of the medical humanities in this country and a pioneer in this field.
Welcome to all three of you. We're simply delighted that you would come and join us on this
occasion. And we look forward to your remarks. We will go in that order after the presentations.
We will have either discussions amongst the panelists themselves or involving all of us. Thank you.
And please, Bruce, would you like to start?
DR. COLE: Thank you, Leon.
PANEL DISCUSSION: THE ROLE OF THE HUMANITIES IN BIOETHICS
DR. COLE: It's an honor to be here and a pleasure to address this group on such an important
occasion. You began your discussions two years ago not with an assessment of the latest technology,
a list of medical possibilities, or a survey of the policy together with a story.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birth- mark" illustrates both the timelessness and the
dangers of the pursuit of human perfection and the revolt against limitations. More than that, it
shows how the stories, poems, philosophy, and thought of the past have something to say about our
future dilemmas. I think it also shows the unique and thoughtful approach of this Commission
headed by my friend and colleague Leon Kass.
I want to thank Leon for inviting me here today and for the opportunity to speak to issues I believe
are inextricably linked with the humanities. I also want to thank Dean Clancy and the Commission
staff for their work in making this meeting possible. And I would like to congratulate all of the
members of the White House Bioethics Commission on the release of your book, Being Human.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has sponsored numerous projects seeking to broaden
understanding of these issues. In the past four years alone, the NEH has spent over a million dollars
on projects to extend bioethics research, establish endowments for bioethics study, and create
fellowships and underwrite documentary films, studies, and even textbooks.
The NEH funded the Baylor College of Medicine's work, A History of Medical Ethics, a one- volume
history of medical ethics from antiquity to the twentieth century. It also provided special support for
the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, the standard reference work in the field. But today we are here to
celebrate this Commission's new book.
Being Human accomplishes something important. It sheds light on bioethics through the lens of the
humanities. To quote one insightful passage of the introduction, "We need to focus not only on the
astonishing new technologies but also on those aspects of being human on which the technologies
impinge. For bioethical dilemmas, though generated by novel developments in the biomedical
science and technology, are not scientific or technological matters. They are human dilemmas,
individual, familial, social, political, and spiritual, confronted by human beings at various stages of
the human life span embedded in networks of meaning and relations and informed by varying
opinions and beliefs about better or worse, right or wrong, and how we are to live," unquote.
Over the last several years, the argument that the realm of bioethics is the province of the medical
field and technology industry appears to be gaining ground, not because it has been persuasive but
because it has been assumed.
The advent of new technologies has been almost universally celebrated. And questions about where
those technologies may lead us have often been written off as irrational fears of Luddites or
practitioners of an exotic faith. Of course, advances in human knowledge are grounds for
excitement, but such excitement only increases the need for a dispassionate consideration of where
the applications of such knowledge takes us.
A purely medical or technical response is not a complete one. It is all too easy to disregard the
categorical imperative and assume a technological one. I think it is fair to say that the allure of the
technological imperative is particularly strong in our time and, as a result, the dangers of
dehumanization more stark than ever.
New technologies are tools which can be used to help or harm, edify, or demean, protect, or destroy.
A knife can be used to perform life- saving surgery or murder. New biotechnologies have the
potential to do far more than merely save or end a life.
Cloning creates a new life in the form of a carbon copy. Genetic advances hold out hope for designing
our offspring according to our wish and promises to redefine what it means to be human.
The new discoveries and knowledge undergirding these technologies hold out promise and hope of
curing disease, overcoming disability, and even extending life, but they also contain great dangers,
the commodification of people, the reduction of human life to disposable resource, nor is this a
distant danger, repellent as it is. It requires that we take stock before taking action. As Leon has
said, there is often wisdom in repugnance.
President Bush charged this Council to "conduct fundamental inquiry into the human and moral
significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and technology." His
instructions assumed that the ultimate significance of biotechnology was broader and deeper than
its utility and that such an inquiry must include those outside the technology industry. Without such
an inquiry, we stand in danger of ambling blithely but blindly into a brave new world. Ultimately,
this inquiry is incomplete without the humanities.
The humanities are, quite simply, the study of what it means to be human. The legacy of our past,
the ideas and principles that motivate us, and the eternal questions that we still ponder, the classics
and archaeology show us from whence our civilization came.
The study of literature and art shapes our sense of beauty. And the knowledge of philosophy and
religion gives meaning to our sense of justice and goodness. At their core, issues of life and death,
identity and connectedness, aspiration and limits, healing and death all pertain to what it means to
be human and, thus, are questions for the humanities.
Not only do the humanities have profound implications for bioethics, but the reverse is true as well.
Many of the new technologies you discuss have the potential to fundamentally redefine what it
means to be human. Germ line manipulations, genetic engineering, and other procedures would
alter DNA and human character. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the future of humanity has
some implications for the future of the humanities. We're all in this together.
I would like to make one last point. As many of you know, I am an art historian by background and
training. I hope you forgive a plug for including great works of visual arts — I can't give any remarks
without mentioning art; I'm sorry — in the survey of sources you consult in your studies here.
Before we had evidence of the written word, we had cave paintings. There are millennias' worth of
evidence that the instinct and drive to make art is a human universal, transcending time, place,
culture, religion, language, and ethnicity. Many of the great masterpieces in the history of art deal
directly with issues you grapple with here: human origins, dignity, death, limitations, and desire for
perfection.
One of the great advantages of art is that it concretizes the abstract and gives it physical shape. It
provides a new and powerful way of looking at and learning from the wisdom of the ages.
This Commission has a difficult task. I commend and congratulate it for its exceptional work and
readiness to draw deeply from the humanities in delving into the perplexing dilemmas of
biotechnology.
In a time when many are tempted or pressured to resolve bioethics questions by reference to market
pressure or interest groups, it is essential for thoughtful citizens to consider the full implications of
new technologies and knowledge. Both the arts and the humanities give us a way to approach these
great issues. No inquiry worth the name is complete without them.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
CHAIRMAN KASS: Thank you very much.
Paul Cantor?
DR. CANTOR: It is a pleasure to be here this morning. It is especially a pleasure to celebrate the
publication of this wonderful anthology, extraordinary event. I think the last time a government
body produced an anthology of literature, it was under the orders of the Emperor Augustus.
So I'll sum up the importance of the humanities for the study of bioethics by saying science can tell us
how to do things, but it can't tell us whether to do things. And that's where the humanities come in.
The humanities help us to imagine the consequences of what we are doing with science. This
anthology is very good in raising the issue of immortality, for example. The ultimate promise of
modern science is immortality. That's why it gets the big bucks when it comes to funding.
But literature can help us imagine what immortality might really be like and in the case of the Swift,
Jonathan Swift, excerpt you have here, show that there might be a down side to the seemingly
wonderful prospect of living forever. And so that I think has been the great function of literature,
the humanities in general.
I really applaud this anthology. It has an extraordinarily wide range of selections. That's one of its
best features, I think. There are some of the obviously great and profound authors, like Homer and
Tolstoy, but I was very pleased to see an excerpt from Gattaca, from a film, reminding us that
literature doesn't just cease with the printed word. And that film, representative of the whole genre,
really is one of the ways that helps us do this imagining. I would have put Blade Runner in the book
if I had had a choice.
Another wonderful selection was the one from J. M. Barrie on Peter Pan. It made me go back and
reread the original play. I hadn't realized how serious it was in its own way. Indeed, I now think
there is no better way of confronting the problem of what it is to grow up and what the choices are
between staying an eternal child, which many of us might like to do, and then facing responsibilities
of adulthood.
So I think this anthology has a great deal to offer. The selections were very well chosen. And I hope
it gets widely disseminated and people can draw upon it.
To pursue this question of the relation of the humanities to bioethics, I would like to concentrate on a
period that I specialize in, the Romantic period, the early Nineteenth Century, say a few remarks
about that because, in a way, this was the first period that confronted modern science and modern
technology. These are the first writers, around 1800, who are dealing with the beginnings of the
Industrial Revolution.
They help us raise one question about turning to the humanities, a point that I think a lot of scientists
might raise. That is, who are these poets, who are these people, the humanities, to say anything
about science? We worry that they don't know anything about science. And can they have anything