When our Founding Fathers declared the fledgling nation's dedication to the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they could scarcely have envisioned the world in which we now live. Every week the news brings researchers' claims of novel methods of screening genes and testing embryos, choosing the gender and modifying the behavior of children, enhancing athletic performance, slowing aging, blunting painful memories, and altering basic temperament. 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 Council was formed to advise the president on bioethical issues related to advances in biomedical science and technology. The Council was chaired by Leon R. Kass, M.D., Ph.D., 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.

In an interview, Dr. Kass can discuss questions that the Council raises in Beyond Therapy:

• Should we use established techniques to test early human embryos for the presence or absence of many genes only to prevent disease, or also to try to get us "better" children?
• Is it appropriate to use techniques for boosting muscle strength developed to treat such diseases as muscular dystrophy in order to improve athletes' performance?
• Should we use discoveries of the biological processes of aging to increase the human lifespan?
• Should we draw on psychopharmacological discoveries to alter our moods, and not just to treat or prevent mental illness?
• Why our heritage of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may draw us particularly to the promise of biotechnology.
• The ethical implications of mapping the human genome.
• Whether scientists and doctors are trying to "play God."
• The moral and spiritual issues around biotechnology that we need to discuss as a nation.

These important ethical questions must be brought out of the narrow circle of bioethics professionals and into the larger public arena, where they belong.

Lisa A. Bullaro Sweet
Publicity Manager
212-207-7170
lisa.bullaro@harpercollins.com
lisa.sweet@harpercollins.com