The muse struck me late Friday night and I scripted a little satirical cartoon (reposted above) about a fictional conversation between a mainstream bioethicist and a Hippocratic Oath believing doctor. I have mostly had an enthusiastic response. However, a few have accused me of painting with too broad a brush. Not all bioethicists believe in infanticide, I have been told–and that is certainly true. Others have noted that contrary to my creation, some bioethicists reject personhood theory and the concept of “speciesism.”
Indeed. Leon Kass, for example, advocates for human dignity. But that is precisely why he was subjected to so much vituperation and calumny from within bioethics after being appointed to the President’s Council, as I wrote about at the time. Moreover, bioethicists who disagree with my fictional creation’s moral views, generally are marginalized in the media and among their peers by having a modifier applied to their views to distinguish them from just plain “bioethicists,” e.g. “conservative bioethicist,” or “Catholic bioethicist,” etc. It’s like how “Christian rock and roll” is never simply rock and roll–no matter how talented the musicians.
Finally, while the sarcasm in the piece is mine, almost everything substantive that the bioethicist says to the doctor are verbatim or near direct quotes from some of the field’s most notable advocates. Peter Singer is named, but there are others whose views are also presented, e.g., John Harris; Tom Beauchamp, R.G. Frey, and Sherwin Nuland, as well as notable proponents of assisted suicide.
So, do bioethicists really think like the one in my cartoon? Alas. To a substantial degree, they do.
November 8th, 2010 | 4:05 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Wesley J. Smith. Wesley J. Smith said: Bioethics Cartoon: Is That What Bioethicists Really Believe? » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things B.. http://bit.ly/9OLXix [...]
November 8th, 2010 | 6:11 pm
If bioethicists are generally not qualified to establish the practice of allopathic medicine, does this mean lawyers, pundits, radio hosts, and journalists are not qualified to determine the validity of global warming?
November 8th, 2010 | 7:18 pm
I just want to point out, as I am sourced for this silliness, that I rarely wear a pink shirt, have less hair and do not kill babies.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 8th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Sourced for attacking Kass, not in the movie.
November 9th, 2010 | 6:52 am
The illogic here is astounding:
Does Wesley Smith consider himself to be a bioethicist (in which case his degree in Law renders him as unqualified as the character he’s attempting to lampoon), or simply a commentator?
If bioethicists think “to a substantial degree” like the one in his cartoon, then Wesley will be hard put to claim that he is one. If, on the other hand, he DOES claim to be a bioethicist, then his stated opinion of his fellow professionals necessarily places his views quite far outside the mainstream of the profession.
Thus, by his own admission, he is either: (a) not a bioethicist at all, or; (b) a renegade bioethicist whose views are inconsistent with the standards of the profession, or; (c) simply one more lay commentator who’d like you to think his opinions are better than yours.
Shall we take a vote. I’d say (c), since I know from personal experience that lawyers tend to think we know everything about everything.
November 9th, 2010 | 1:52 pm
The worst thing is that those bioethicists are really influencing the general population, and specially the physicians and the nurses.
There “philosophy” (utilitarianism) has the same roots of the one of those pro euthanasia and pro abusive experimentation with humans beigns that were condamned in Nüremberg.
November 9th, 2010 | 3:43 pm
“Painting with too broad a brush” is putting it mildly. The cardboard cut-out “bioethicist” you present spouts opinions which fail to capture the range of views held by philosophers working in the field of medical ethics and (more significantly) completely fails to support any of his positions with anything representing the sort of nuanced analysis a professional philosopher might bring to the issue. Obviously there are limitations to what one may reasonably expect to convey via a brief skit such as this one – and if you had presented this as a merely a satirical piece dashed off for the amusement of your readers (rather than as a representation of the way bioethicists actually think) I might well have accepted it in that light hearted spirit. But as it stands it strikes me as just another one of your all too familiar attempts to malign an opposing position after distorting and simplifying it beyond recognition.
A search for the word “bioethicist” on Google News reveals that the baby-killing bioethicist persona is being kept in the public eye not by the mainstream media but by “life-issue” blogs such as yours. Pro-life bioethicists such as Leon Kass and Charles Camosy are typically introduced without qualifiers such as “conservative” and are usually given prominence in the discussion of issues of medical ethics which rise to public consciousness. Your portrayal here is a poorly aimed attack on the entire field- ignoring the fact that (as far as I’m aware) most bioethicists do not, for instance, agree with Peter Singer’s views on infanticide and many are diametrically opposed to them.
That aside, bioethicists make no laws and are generally part of a process of determining what is ethical in medicine. If infanticide or euthanasia happens to be against the law then no bioethicist (working in that capacity) is capable of over-ruling this based on his philosophical analysis. Why should one require a license to serve in an advisory capacity or to take part in the process of policy formulation? Neither congressmen nor the President of the United States are required to pass examinations or present any evidence of intellectual ability but they all possess powers of policy formulation that eclipse those of the lowly bioethicist.
November 9th, 2010 | 10:09 pm
Raven: well said!!
November 9th, 2010 | 11:19 pm
Some folks perhaps forget that bioethicists have appointments at hospitals and health care institutions where they do directly influence policy.
November 10th, 2010 | 3:24 am
Craig Henry: Many bioethicists working in hospitals are themselves medically qualified. They do influence policy (as do many other healthcare professionals) but I doubt you’ll find a hospital anywhere which would be willing to place someone like Peter Singer on its ethics board. Mainstream views in bioethics (i.e. those which actually determine the actions of healthcare professionals and the fates of patients and research subjects) and the thought processes of medical ethicists are not as Wesley presents them here.
[almost random: here's a video promo for the 2010 National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference. Keynote speaker was Carl Elliot, who briefly also taught bioethics at Princeton]
November 10th, 2010 | 8:45 pm
Many years ago, a nun who was the “catholic” “chaplain” at our institution for the mentally retarded bragged to me about a course she took at Georgetown and went into detail about how they justified starving a child with Down’s syndrome to death rather than to do surgery .
It never occurred to her that within ten feet of her office lived adults who were more mentally handicapped than the average Down’s syndrome and that similar “justifications” (e.g. Callahan’s book on “setting limits”) were being used to justify not giving even basic medicine or uncomplicated surgery for these people.
November 23rd, 2010 | 9:09 pm
Yes this vignette represents a composite of “ethicist” views that are particularly ‘liberal”, even to the point of being left of mainstream. But in my reading and experience as a family and palliative care physician, I have encountered all these views (and written against some that particularly troubled me). There is no such thing as a consensus of opinions on ethics, but there does seem to be a consensus in two conflicting camps about how we are to reach our opinions. If the ‘rational only” model is followed, logically consistent views are seen like Singer’s abortion – infanticide, or Kevorkian’s euthanasia = death-by-request. If “dignity” or “inviolability of human life” is given credence (accepted as nonscientific wisdom from of old), then different endpoints are reached. The generic ethicist above espouses the former.
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