Sunday, December 14, 2003
Do Humans Matter?
People don't like to think that life has value. That would cause problems with their whole way of viewing the world.
"So what is it about Kass that upsets so many bioethicists, other than perhaps, a touch of professional jealousy? Simply this: Kass eloquently and forcefully that human life has intrinsic moral value simply because it is human. This flies in the face of the predominate ideology of contemporary bioethics that disdains human exceptionalism as arbitrary, irrational, human-centric, and indeed, an act of discrimination against animals known as 'speciesism.'"
So the debate continues. Of course, if the speciesists are right, I fail to see why their job matters. It's not wrong for a lion to kill the cubs of another male, just unfortunate for them. Logically, it's not wrong for a man, then, to kill his new wife's children, if she should have any.
""It has become the era of Leon Kass," McGee writes, "brought back to scholarly life [as if he ever left it] by a call from President George W. Bush. It was a call to become a Presidential bioethics advisor [as head of the President's Council] in the service of putting a stop to embryonic stem cell research, and if possible, putting a stop to a number of other scientific and clinical projects objectionable to the far right wing of the Republican Party, and in particular, Southern Baptists."
Bioethicists pride themselves on rational discourse, but this is mere diatribe. Surely McGee knows that Kass is Jewish, not Southern Baptist. (For that matter, neither are President Bush nor, as far as I know, are any council members who tend to agree with Kass's perspectives.)"
The straw man. Why is it that people I know who think that socialism is the only way to save this country are always regarded as part of the far right? Last I checked, socialism was somewhere between far-left and left.
Take a gander, too, at the "personhood theory" that is now becoming prevalent in Europe, pushed on by such fellows as Peter Singer. It is truly frightening. The world is groaning and finding itself Arian, or perhaps Gnostic.
"Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder."
"So what is it about Kass that upsets so many bioethicists, other than perhaps, a touch of professional jealousy? Simply this: Kass eloquently and forcefully that human life has intrinsic moral value simply because it is human. This flies in the face of the predominate ideology of contemporary bioethics that disdains human exceptionalism as arbitrary, irrational, human-centric, and indeed, an act of discrimination against animals known as 'speciesism.'"
So the debate continues. Of course, if the speciesists are right, I fail to see why their job matters. It's not wrong for a lion to kill the cubs of another male, just unfortunate for them. Logically, it's not wrong for a man, then, to kill his new wife's children, if she should have any.
""It has become the era of Leon Kass," McGee writes, "brought back to scholarly life [as if he ever left it] by a call from President George W. Bush. It was a call to become a Presidential bioethics advisor [as head of the President's Council] in the service of putting a stop to embryonic stem cell research, and if possible, putting a stop to a number of other scientific and clinical projects objectionable to the far right wing of the Republican Party, and in particular, Southern Baptists."
Bioethicists pride themselves on rational discourse, but this is mere diatribe. Surely McGee knows that Kass is Jewish, not Southern Baptist. (For that matter, neither are President Bush nor, as far as I know, are any council members who tend to agree with Kass's perspectives.)"
The straw man. Why is it that people I know who think that socialism is the only way to save this country are always regarded as part of the far right? Last I checked, socialism was somewhere between far-left and left.
Take a gander, too, at the "personhood theory" that is now becoming prevalent in Europe, pushed on by such fellows as Peter Singer. It is truly frightening. The world is groaning and finding itself Arian, or perhaps Gnostic.
"Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder."
