Week 8

Sandel begins The Case Against Perfection with the assumption that some element of unpredictability is all it takes for a decision to feel moral. He is correct in identifying that the autonomy objection isn't a persuasive grounds to make arguments about the morality of genetic engineering. For Sandel the moral question is raised by the sense that genetic enhancement goes beyond what one could consider medical purposes, he appeals the reader to reflect on a moral tradition no longer employed by many individuals. Sandel's critique isn't rigorous, for instance when examining hypothetical therapies that would extend the memory span of the elderly he glosses over another remedial therapy, Viagra. The problem for Sandel is that the aspiration to better ourselves is a commitment to an unhealthy relationship with ourselves, one that threatens human dignity.

"To grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world- questions about the moral status of nature, and about the proper stance of human beings toward the given world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make them unavoidable." 

Sandel makes the same case as Alasdair MacIntyre does in After Virtue: that is, the lack of a classical moral tradition inhibits the ability for one to act morally and discuss morality in any meaningful way. Either argument on either side of the debate may be logically valid, 'the respective concepts they use are incommensurable, so there is no apparent rational way to decide in favor of one argument over the other.' Sandel argument can only be successful if it convinces the majority- currently, this seems unlikely given that the practice of philosophy is a marginalized vocation with no real influence upon society.
    Sandel continues in the second chapter:

"One aspect of our humanity that might be threatened by enhancement and genetic engineering is our capacity to act freely, for ourselves, by our own efforts, and to consider ourselves responsible - worthy of praise or blame - for the things we do and for the way we are." 

I feel strongly that the opposite is true- that technologies of enhancement and engineering are fundamentally ones of self expression. Sandel draws a correspondence of this freedom to self reliance, what exactly, "by our own efforts" means for Sandel is lost on this reader. For Sandel, enhancement decreases our admiration for achievement, but ironically it is responsible for engendering spectacle in the same cultures. Further, Sandel asserts that enhancement threatens human agency, because it is a 'wholly mechanistic understanding of human action at odds with human freedom and moral responsibility.' People don't look at those who rely on enhancements to function with the view that doing so diminishes their agency: the opposite is true.  Being able to compete at the professional level in sports is related to ones health and genetics, those who lack these or the time to train will not have the agency required to perform at the same level. To assume that the only virtue of a sport or physical activity is to compete relegates these activities to a spectacle, performed for the vast majority that don't have the required agency. Sandel is drawn to many stoic ideals:

"Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes." - De Provid. v.8

"Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men's desires, but by the removal of desire." - Epictetus iv.1.175

Sandel expends a great amount of energy on the topic of physical enhancements in sports, which is a marginal issue when considering the question of physical enhancement in general.

"Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have."

Chapter three presents an argument against designer babies. First, Sandel assumes a normative ideal of parenthood- one not necessarily shared/practiced by the majority of cultures. As I alluded to in the first part of this blog post, for better or for worse emotivism is the context that moral discussions are had now. We can't even regulate tobacco or alcohol use during pregnancy, we can only stigmatize it. Sandel hasn't a chance to stigmatize designer babies to a degree sufficient to stymie the practice either internationally or domestically. It would be quixotic to engage Sandel's argument further, the rest of which is a ad hominem attack of genetic enhancement as the new eugenics.

Week 7

Harris broaches the topic of reproductive choice in light of the democratic presumption in chapter five. At the core of this liberal ideology is that the burden of proof is on those that wish to deny a liberty rather than those that wish to practice it. Further, the proof needs to be sufficient to the degree as to warrant consideration, here Harris demarcates this degree as relating to harm to others. This is a slippery slope as harm isn’t well defined when it relates to others or society. The prosecution of faith healing gone awry still has only been successfully litigated in the context of child fatality, the only thing keeping the same argument from being used in cases of those in which an adult has been killed is that by the states definition, once you reach the age of consent you’re responsible for every belief you have. It is obvious this only the case as to avoid the steeper slope that follows. In contrast to this, there isn’t any legislation against smoking during pregnancy, only stigmatism. I think opponents of reproductive choice should pick their bone first with those that affect negatively on the unborn before they direct their energy at those that seek to encourage the investigation of prospective methods of enhancement.

   In chapter six the focus shifts to the concerns of reproductive liberty: disability and super-ability. Harris identifies three fallacies common to arguments against reproductive liberty and enhancement. The supposition of the first is that the choice to repair/enhance function implies a judgement on the previous state. This would assume that every choice is made primarily on the basis of being against a negative and not explicitly for a positive. The second fallacy is based on the sense of violation of the principle of equality when one aims to produce children that are less damaged or have enhanced capacities. This assumes that the problem inequality doesn’t already exist and that one viable solution will just make the problem worse. Finally, the third fallacy, that the demarcation of disability is made relative to normalcy, errors in that which is species-typical functioning can be disadvantages given a change of circumstance. To Harris’s definition of disability, one would be disabled when drowning in magma. This assumes that what we consider normal always involves adaptation to circumstances we are subjected to, so while we may not be able to adapt the world completely to accommodate those with disabilities it is always to ease their relation to the normal.

week 6

In chapter three Harris approaches the therapy-enhancement dichotomy through several critics of enhancement, who define enhancement as that which interrupts species-typical function. This dichotomy doesn’t have any corresponding dichotomy between medicine as it is practiced today and as it could be practiced in the future. For instance, dentistry or contraceptives are both preventative medical practices, that by Daniels and Boorse rubric would constitute an enhancement as would everyday enhancements such as makeup. Harris’ use of Occam’s razor is well applied in dispelling the need for noneffective distinctions on what is and isn’t normal. As for classifying interventions that reduce the likelihood of death, according to Daniels and Boorse’s definition, since the diseases of old age is species typical so are the diseases that we vaccinate for. A vaccination is an immune system enhancement that doesn’t restore a function to it’s normal action, it enhances that function as a preventative measure. Therapy and enhancement aren’t mutually exclusive. As Harris puts it: “The Normality of the trait in question is clearly doing no work at all in the assessment of its moral acceptability or of the risks it might be worth running to change things. - The problem seems to be an unjustified assumption that normal traits are acceptable by reason of their normality and that the risks of new “treatments” are justifiable only when the alternative is an inevitable catastrophic disease.- On this view the elixir of life, operating on normal physiology and making it immortal, would not in Daniel’s view be an enhancement!” The concept of enhancement isn’t able to determine in any succinct way a scientifically discrete category.

In chapter four Harris outlines the five ethical objections to life extension: “(i) Life extension would be unjust (ii) It would be pointless and ultimately unwanted because of the inevitable boredom of indefinite life (iii) It would in any event be nugatory or self-defeating because personal identity could not survive long periods of extended existence. I may wish to be immortal but in the end it wouldn’t be “me,” so the project fails (iv) It would lead to overpopulation and perhaps the end of reproduction. (v) Finally, it is claimed that life extension would be prohibitively expensive in terms of increased health care cost.” While I think Harris’ arguments against all of these objections are valid, for me his argument against (iii) and (iv) are understated. As one who anticipates the day when I’m not "this one", his argument against three isn't as persuasive as it could be. On reservation (iv) he only needs to make the point that policy regulating population will need to be instated regardless of if we say "yes" to enhancement.

Week Five

There is no doubt after reading the first two chapters of John Harris’s Enhancing Evolution, that he is preaching to the choir as far as I’m concerned. In the first chapter Harris lays before the reader several questions which contextualize his ambitions for writing the book. He lays out his agenda sequentially: the first three chapters to argue that enhancement is a moral and political prerogative, chapters 4, 5, and 6 deal with life extension, reproductive and disability applications respectively, 7 and 8 analyse the work of Sandel, Kass, and Habermas, 9 on cosmetic enhancements, and the last two on the assessing the future for research. Harris identifies selections from the philosophy of Bertrand Russel as being illuminative to the issues broached by the question of the humanity in human enhancement. In chapter two Harris briefly illustrates several arguments by reference to five contemporary and speculative examples of enhancements. These are: chemical versus mechanical enhancement, disease and vaccination, genetic enhancement, chemical enhancement, and life extension.

Week four

Both of this weeks papers deal in managing the hurdles faced by synthetic biology- and new fields of research in general, in regards to the principals leading it’s effective communication, regulation, and commercialization. While both papers advocate a congenial methodology of iterative oversight instead of deferring to the precautionary principle; there’s a great deal of skepticism that may be drawn to the competency of this approach in the real world. Take fracking for example, which has been practiced on the commercial scale for ten years and regulated in the same fashion as proposed in The Ethics of Synthetic Biology: Guiding Principles for Emerging Technologies and  Synthetic biology confronts publics and policy makers: challenges for communication, regulation and commercialization. Fracking has received a continuous stream of criticism from many government agencies and the media over the course of it’s practice, but very little legislative action has taken place as a result.

   The bureaucracy responsible for maintaining proportionality, distributive justice and procedural justice is both inflexible and inefficient; what chance does public involvement have in enacting decisive legislation? Without hype there is very little chance that the public will reach a definitive opinion. So, in the case of fracking and any emerging trend in technology treated in the same fashion, the only regulation enacted seems to be that which prevents complete obvert catastrophe. With this skepticism in mind I feel resigned to support the status quo, as I find the alternative to be completely unproductive.

week three

   Overall, the gestalt set forth in Callahan’s Demythologizing the Stem Cell Juggernaut is one built on fair considerations of a multitude of variables implicated in the discourse at present. The weakness of the gestalt is in the lack of consistently applying attention to the logic that underpins each belief. For instance, Callahan believes that the argument “nothing is lost” is weak because it presumes that it is legitimate to have spare embryos. Here, Callahan is taking issue with the origin of this legitimacy, saying that it is a public health problem that has been accommodated medically. He asserts the remedy of the underlying cause by suggesting to address the social and economic context responsible for this problem. I find this argument to be naive at best, it assumes the illegitimacy of a practice based on the allusion to intractable hypothetical quasi-fascist alternatives. Callahan forgets to account for the uncertainty of IVF’s, if abortion is morally acceptable because it is predicated on the certainty that it will save a mother from death, shouldn’t the uncertainty of the success of an embryo in IVF make it inherently immoral? Ironically, it is easy for Callahan to support abortion regardless of the benefit it provides the woman, where is his argument for social and economic reform as a primary objective?   

   In continuation, the profusion of reasons Callahan utilizes to educe his gestalt largely serve to beguile the “juggernaut”. His three considerations in weighing a moral obligation are all fallacious to some degree.

   To begin, the first- that there is a common misimpression that stem cell research is the only methodology applicable to various diseases, is really a mischaracterization. We have been treating these diseases for years with alternative methods, the disproportionate media attention played to stem cell research has slowly degraded since Callahan wrote Demythologizing the Stem Cell Juggernaut. In science, it is often necessary for some amount of hype to be generated about a line of inquiry while it is established, while this may engender negative practices and misinformation, it is nonetheless necessary. The omission of one line of inquiry will not constitute a moral failure for those whose interests are weighed towards the defense of the embryo, it will however be a failure of the philosophy of science.

  Moving on to the second- the question of what might else be done with the money used to fund stem cell research that is more constructive, is a concern that can be broached about many more topics. It is a matter of personal interest which public vocation one chooses to divest or restructure. Further, this concern isn’t a criticism on any of the commercial biotech ventures.  

   Finally, the third- that there are more pressing issues to attend to than those of the present and future that are afflicted by illness; is a reformulation of the second. For Callahan, the only figure that seems to matter as far as medical progress and medical need are concerned is the national life expectancy. Callahan doesn’t draw the conclusion that research into diseases of age may ever illuminate our general understanding of biology. Callahan ascribes a lower research priority onto diseases of old age because he is comfortable with the idea of conditionally dehumanizing- to a degree, humans that can’t provide for themselves: that are going to die anyway.

Week 2

There are several inconsistencies in both liberal and conservative discourse. Though many of these inconsistencies are resolvable given further distinctions; some are not. For example, in developing his moral anthropology, Cohen attempts to present what makes humans distinct from animals.

“We are special animals, separated by distinct powers of reason and by our moral aspirations and moral failings. the other animals live outside of good and evil-”

In my view Cohen makes this claim to hastily to consider cases where a biological human is unable to acquire or has no need for a classical moral tradition. Cohen recognizes this and treats these cases to the prescription that they are “human lives”, the term that only had two dimensions: the biologic and the ethical. Cohen leaves this fallacy by allusion to a vague biological notion that is particular to humans. Here unattended, one is left to assume that what makes a life human is first genetic, as no arguments can be made about the dependence of a moral tradition being to the equality of all humans. Macklin identifies this type of metaphorical reasoning as the main impasse to the conservative tradition of bioethics to having a constructive discourse with the established liberal and communitarian ideologies.

“But these criticisms seem misguided: first the council’s willingness to ask fundamental questions about “being human”- questions about birth and death, equality and community, happiness and excellence- shows it takes the discipline of bioethics seriously; it properly begins with an account of the human person as an ethical animal, and that without a moral anthropology it has little useful to say.”

   Its trivial to say that without moral anthropology you can’t apply moral anthropology to a moral anthropology. A normative moral anthropology defined by Macklin and any others- in pluralism; will inescapably be driven by ideology. Egalitarianism becomes myth when it is applied to issues, for which there are resulting a paradox’s that have to be resolved by arbitrary distinctions. What is egalitarian about the right of a pregnant women to save her life by aborting her baby, while barring someone from the possibility of life by restricting the use of embryonic stem cells?

    Cohen characterizes Conservatives’ embrace of the “culture of life” as accepting the human reality of mortality as always preferable to betraying “our neighbors, our family, or our nation.” How are the cases of Terri Schiavo and those presupposed by life extension technologies different? Cohen only addresses the case of embryonic stem cell therapy, for which his case is based on the principle that all humans are created equally.

Ecclesiastes 3:18-21: “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals.  Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath (literally “spirit“); humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

Cohen’s sentiment that human sexuality is clearly different than animals is born out of  his ignorance of the various behavioral and chemical mechanisms utilized by animals to the same end. I guarantee that some humans indulge in “merely the animalistic character of sex”. So it is seen that if all humans are created equal- intrinsically,  the “culture of life” embraced by conservatives is posited conditionally on DNA alone. The human genome is a very fickle thing to condition anything on. Quantitatively, a healthy human has about as much in common with a Bonobo then it does a person with Down’s syndrome.