ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
The Evolution of Bioethics
The relevance of Braintrust is not limited to the academy or the armchair. If the
is/ought distinction is unduly exaggerated in moral philosophy, it becomes a weapon
in the sphere of public policy – an excuse to defund or severely regulate research that
does not reinforce popular prejudice. After all, what is at stake is the power to shape
and regulate the behavior of others, and maintaining that power depends on popular
appeal rather than empirical evidence. Churchland seems to have learned this political
truth in 2008 when she presented a paper to George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics.
The council was already notorious as an ideological star chamber established to
construct an intellectual façade for the administration’s war on stem cell research.
With a few exceptions (including Michael Gazzaniga, who seems to have adopted a
curious methodological relativism), the council was composed primarily of Right
wing political pundits, such as Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer, rather
than research scientists. The council was originally chaired by Leon Kass, who was
appointed shortly after the publication of his anti-cloning essay, “The Wisdom of
Repugnance” (The New Republic, June 2, 1997, 216.22). In this essay, Kass appeals to
inarticulate emotional reactions, not only as a justification for banning scientific
research, but as a justification for dismissing reasoned arguments which contradict
those emotional reactions.
We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings [. . .] because we
intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that
we rightfully hold dear. [. . . R]epugnance may be the only voice left that
speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls
that have forgotten how to shudder.
Not only does Kass use a gut reaction to argue for the implementation of government
policy, he uses it to divide the in-group from the out-group, the moral from the
“shallow souls.” Kass’ argument exemplifies, perhaps deliberately, Hume’s claim that
reason is the slave of the passions. At the same time, it abdicates any pretense of
prioritizing reason over gut feeling.
As chair of the Council on Bioethics, Kass removed any “shallow souls” who would
not ratify the Council’s foregone conclusions – most famously molecular biologist and
Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn, one of only 3 research scientists on the 18member council. Though Kass was eventually replaced by Edmund Pellegrino, the
council’s strategy remained dependent on ad hoc arguments and emotionalistic
platitudes, particularly the malleable abstraction of “human dignity.” After bioethicist
and council member Ruth Macklin publicly pointed out that the term “dign ity” served
only as a rhetorical red herring, the council, in an effort to salvage its own credibility,
invited papers from philosophers, theologians, lawyers, physicians, and politicians,
which were published as the report, Human Dignity and Bioethics. Though a handful
of bioethicists, such as Churchland and Daniel Dennett, tried to explain the nature of
Macklin’s argument, most of the articles (including one by Leon Kass himself) aimed
to ratchet up the emotional valence of the term rather than clarify precisely how it
justified a government ban on life-saving research.
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