The President's Council on Bioethics
Foreword by Leon R. Kass, M.D., Chairman
"Profound....Poses the big questions fairly and lays out the data for futuristic debate. Time to think about the brave new world we're rushing into."
--William Safire, The New York Times
"In terms of their importance to the future of our society, these issues rank up there with war and peace. The new report ought to be required reading for anyone aspiring to lead the nation."
--Alan Murray, Wall Street Journal
We stand on the threshold of a brave new world envisioned long ago only by the most far-seeing of the writers of classic science fiction--a world in which biotechnology offers exciting prospects for healing the sick and relieving suffering. Advances in genetics, drug discovery, and regenerative medicine promise cures for dreaded diseases. Discoveries in neuroscience and psychopharmacology promise better treatments for the mentally ill. Techniques of assisted reproduction have already allowed more than a million infertile couples to have their own children. Without such advances--past, present, and future--many of us would lead diminished lives, or not be able to live at all.
But what happens when biotechnology meets the pursuit of happiness? Should we be turning to biotechnology to fulfill our deepest human desires? Because these medical innovations have impressive powers to alter the workings of body and mind, they are becoming attractive to people who are not ill but who would like to look younger, perform better, feel happier, or become more "perfect." These extraordinary social ramifications--the question of who we are, and what sort of people we wish to become--are explored in Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (ReganBooks Trade Paperback Original; December 2003; $14.95), the groundbreaking report from the President's Council on Bioethics.
Established by George W. Bush on November 28, 2001, the President's Council on Bioethics was formed to advise the president on ethical issues related to advances in biomedical science and technology. The Council's mission included fundamental inquiry into the human and moral significance of biotechnological advances and an exploration of specific ethical and policy questions related to these developments.
Among the serious moral and ethical questions that the Council raises in Beyond Therapy are problems that it hopes will form the basis for a national discussion of biotechnology:
- We now have techniques to test early human embryos for the presence or absence of many genes. Shall we use these techniques only to prevent disease, or also to try to get us "better" children?
- We are acquiring techniques for boosting muscle strength and performance. Shall we use them only to treat muscular dystrophy and the weak muscles of the elderly, or also to enable athletes to attain superior performance?
- We are gradually learning how to control the biological processes of aging. Should we seek only to diminish the bodily and mental infirmities of old age, or also to engineer large increases in the maximum human lifespan?
- We are gaining new techniques for altering mental life, including memory and mood. Should we use them only to prevent or treat mental illness, or also to blunt painful memories of shameful behavior, transform a melancholic temperament, or ease the sorrows of mourning?
Though genetically engineered "designer babies" are not yet in the offing, other beyond-therapeutic uses for other biomedical innovations are already upon us, particularly in the use of psychotropic drugs affecting memory, mood, and behavior. In still other cases, such as research aimed at retarding senescence, only time will tell what sort of uses these advances will be put to. In a sense, the authors of Beyond Therapy point out, two prominent features of American life--the power of free markets and the prestige of medicine--play an important part in this discussion. "As a people committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we may tend to be especially drawn to the promise of biotechnology. Medicine thrives in a culture that values life; science and enterprise thrive in a society that values freedom; technology flourishes in a nation eager to make life more prosperous and comfortable."
The age of biotechnology, they point out, is not so much about technology itself as it is about human beings empowered by biotechnology. "To understand the human and social meaning of the new age, we must begin not from our tools and products but from where human beings begin, namely, with very human desires: for better children, superior performance, younger and more beautiful bodies, abler minds, happier souls." As we enjoy the benefits of biotechnology, the members of the Council contend, we need to hold fast to an account of the human being, seen not in material or mechanistic or medical terms but in psychic and moral and spiritual ones.
"The reservations that we have raised in this report are the worries of a free and decent people concerned for its character and its goodness and its soul," the Council concludes. "Had we looked only at the perils of the technologies that seem to lie in our future, and had we sought to imagine the worst, it would not have been difficult to raise up specters of terrifying and inhuman violations, or of an unprecedented despotism of man over man... But that is not what we perceive when we peer over the horizon, because our society, dedicated as it is to life and liberty and happiness, is always alert to repel such excesses. Rather, the concerns emerge from a sense that tremendous new powers to serve certain familiar and often well-intentioned desires may blind us to the larger meaning of our ideals, and may narrow our sense of what it is to live, to be free, and to seek after happiness. If, by informing and moderating our desires and by grasping the limits of our new powers, we can keep in mind the meaning of our founding ideals, we just might find the means to savor the fruits of the age of biotechnology without succumbing to its most dangerous temptations."
Beyond Therapy brings these crucial issues out of the narrow circle of bioethics professionals and into the larger public arena, where matters of this importance rightly belong.
About the Authors
Leon R. Kass, M.D., Ph.D., is chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics. He is the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the author of Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs, The Ethics of Human Cloning (with James Q. Wilson), and Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics.
The other members of the President's Council on Bioethics are Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., Rebecca S. Dresser, J.D., M.S., Daniel W. Foster, M.D., Francis Fukuyama, Ph.D., Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D., Robert P. George, J.D., D.Phil., Mary Ann Glendon, J.D., M. Comp. L., Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, Dr. Phil., William B. Hurlbut, M.D., Charles Krauthammer, M.D., William F. May, Ph.D., Paul McHugh, M.D., Gilbert C. Meilaender, Ph.D., Janet D. Rowley, M.D., Michael J. Sandel, D.Phil., and James Q. Wilson, Ph.D.
Beyond Therapy
Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness
The President's Council on Bioethics
(Medical/Ethics / 0-06-073490-6 / $14.95 / 352 pages)
A ReganBooks Trade Paperback Original / December 2003
