Posted By Tom Anderson on May 26, 2001 at 16:28:50:

http://secretcodes.org/bioethics.html

On the importance of Bioethics

Introduction
What is ethics
Quotes and comments
Valid Bioethics
The institutions behind Bioethics
Call to public action

Introduction

Bioethics are a new kind of profession for considering ethical questions in
new technology for human health. Since Bioethics have become widespread, I
have had a critical stance towards them. My first opinion was that
Bioethics could be used by government and religious lobbies to suspend
research on important forms of technology, and influence the public opinion
to support such agendas.

However, I had to admit I knew too little about arguments and facts
propagated by bioethicists to judge about their decisions. I've decided to
read papers and detailed Bioethics reports that are objecting to forms of
new medical and scientifical advances, prepared to seriously consider
arguments about real harms and dangers I might find.

What is ethics?

To understand and define Bioethics, we first have to understand the common
definition of ethics. The dictionary definition goes as follows:

1a. A set of principles of right conduct.
1b. A theory or a system of moral values.
2. The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific
moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.
3. The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the
members of a profession: medical ethics.

If ethics are the study of morals and the philosophical process of
considering what is moral and what not, then what are the concrete ethical
convictions underlying the bioethical evaluation process? If these
convictions would be reconsidered and questioned on every decision, or if
an arbitrary set of ethics, such as religious ones, are used, the decision
process can't be effective. After all, bioethics have become a
government-supported field, and are intended to determine public policies,
and ultimately, laws that affect all individuals in the country. Therefore,
ethics would have to be based on convictions that all individuals agree to.
Ethics of objectivist moral definitions could be suitable in this
situation, i.e. any action that willingly and directly benefits the
well-being of a conscious human being is ethical, as long as it doesn't
willingly and directly harm any other conscious human being. But, as long
as such a definition is not made and used by bioethicists, we cannot be
sure what ethical convictions they are referring to. As I mentioned above,
I have read several reports on Bioethics in order to analyze and consider
the arguments and warnings without bias to make an evaluation of bioethical
claims. What I found in such essays is quite interesting. I've decided I
could best mediate this to the reader by quoting certain parts of articles,
analyzing and commenting on each. All of the following quotes are from
professional bioethicists.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Society demands general respect for the human body and its parts:
human tissue should not be used at will or abused. Increasing
public concern has been expressed over a number of ethical issues
raised by the uses of human tissue as they have developed in the
1980s and 1990s.

An authoritarian writing style is used, containing personal judgments about
what society should or should not do, without stating concrete reasons.
What are the reasons why human tissue should not be used at will,
especially if it can help research or benefit people? Does the volitional
use of artificial human tissue in experiments harm the rights of any
individual? No. Then what is the reason for public concern, perhaps just
the lack of knowledge and serious consideration?

There is an important and urgent need to consider, clarify and,
where necessary, strengthen the ethical and legal framework
within which the clinical and research uses of human tissue take
place.

That sounds a bit like justification of the importance of the own job. The
writer talks about an urgent need for good old regulation of private
sectors of medical science. It is actually questionable if legal guidelines
are needed at all, since the rights of the individual and its well-being
are already protected by basic constitutional rights. There has been no
past incident of a major purposeful violation of these rights through
legitimate medicine or science, and there is no generally accepted and
proven scenario on how this could happen in the future. Why the urgency to
step in, intervent and regulate?

The legal status of human tissue is unclear.

Not true, considering that transplantations of all kinds have been standard
medical practice in the past fifty years. At no point, established medical
methods like organ donations, have harmed individuals on purpose or acted
against their free will. Why should the legal status of human tissue become
unclear again, now that simply different methods such as genetics are being
used? In any case, operations occur in agreement with the involved
individuals.

[...] Second, a children’s future autonomy interests ground the
child’s ability to decide for herself to what extent she wishes
to obtain knowledge of her genetic profile. Decisions by adults
to test children preclude a child’s “open future” to decide for
herself, absent urgent disease conditions, for which treatment
exists. E.g. at reproductive age children may decide for
themselves whether to be tested for carrier conditions which they
may pass on to offspring.

Agreed, but regarding tests that are relevant to a childs' immediate
health, the ability of self-decision is irrelevant. For example, it is a
medical necessity to make a thorough medical examination, take a blood test
of a new born baby to identify health problems at an early stage, and
administer certain vaccines, long before the child can make own decisions.
It is even a moral necessity because it ensures the childs health and
well-being in the future. Preventing or allowing the genetical equivalents
of such medical practice would not be different at all.

The underlying argument, that diagnosis of genetical diseases can be bad if
it reveals the imperfections of a human being, is invalid in the long term.
In the near future, genetical therapies or modifications will be possible
that can heal such diseases, which means the capability to diagnose
genetical diseases results in the ability to heal them. If this can be
done, it will be a moral necessity, preventing unnecessary suffering.

Genetics education must be required for every physician, ethics
training for every young scientist, and reproductive issues
training should be given to every minister and politician. These
are issues for today. With our attention focused on the
technology of the month (in 1997 these included cloned sheep and
monkeys, babies from frozen eggs, headless frog embryos, a 63
year-old mother, sperm from dead men, and septuplets) we seldom
take the time to accomplish even these contemporary objectives.
[...]

What we see here is not more than the creation of an artificial new market
niche for Bioethics through cheap, emotion-driven marketing. Can you
imagine what would happen if every scientist, every productive in the
medical field, and every politician at the levers of regulatory state
power, would be required to deal with the vague questions and
considerations of Bioethics? It would be a big setback in scientifical
advancements, including important ones like cures for cancer, HIV, cellular
aging, and germs resistent to modern antibiotics.

What do things like "cloned sheep and monkeys, babies from frozen eggs,
headless frog embryos, a 63 year-old mother, sperm from dead men", all have
in common? They all sound very scary and horrible to us. Indeed, much
everyday routine in the medical profession, such as todays operations,
require a strong personality and self-control for people in these
professions who daily save human lives. But despite the naturally negative
emotions that normal people bring towards some new and old forms of medical
practices, these practices cure diseases and save lives, and develop new,
better methods for doing so. This is not different with new technology, and
if you take the time to rationally consider the above scenarios, they do
not harm humans, nor are forced actions against the will of human beings
involved; ultimately, they lead to an improvement of human life and
well-being, without going against will or dignity of patients.

[...] Bioethics is growing quickly but it is unlikely to catch up
with science.

Yes, let's hope it won't.

It is time, I believe, to use some imagination to think about
what might come to be in the world of genetics in the next 100
years. Only by looking at the long-term outcomes of our current
genetic research will we see the compelling need to confront the
most basic questions posed by genetic medicine. And, in any
event, it has not escaped the attention of this author that it is
no more dangerous to exercise a little imagination about our
future than it is dangerous to fail to be prescient about
possible surprises, such as human cloning.

Again, with no concrete facts or considerations, convictions are presented
in conjunction with emotionalisms and arbitrary personal concerns. Human
cloning, by the way, can be a responsible process, if genetical problems
can be predicted at an early stage, and for synthesizing body parts for
transplantation, especially when it is done for necessary medical purposes.
The most radical example is this: cloning of human bodies with blank or
nonfunctional brains and central nerve systems could once lead to body
transplantation to cure even the most serious forms of illnesses. This
sounds like a very new, unknown field, but it could become a medical
practice that helps countless people enormously. Also, cloning is a natural
biological process for many organisms such as certain microbes and plants.
And, to invalidate another boethical argument against human cloning,
cloning live humans is not the replication of the identity of an
individual. The unique identity is characterized by much more than the
genome of a person, and to prove that, we don't have to look further than
at genetically identical twins.

There is more than enough ethical mud in genetics of 1998 to keep
physicians, lawyers, scientists and bioethicists on guard. A
majority are unaware of the progress made in routine and exotic
genetics, and most are caught off guard by each new technology.

Nice polemics. You could also say that innocent technological and
scientifical research is caught off guard by the Bioethics movement and its
urge for endless regulations and attacks.

Costs of genetic services will fall precipitously just as
evidence accumulates about the costs associated with having
particular genes. Virtually every culture will have to cope with
an unparalleled pressure to conserve social resources by applying
pressure to individuals in an attempt to modify their
reproductive behavior and other life choices.

That's right, because free, unregulated science moves fast and towards ever
decreasing prices. Artificially high prices are mainly a result of
regulation and economical intervention by forces like the state. If I
interpreted the second awkward sounding sentence right, it looks like the
danger of overpopulation is being used as an argument against technologies
that result in human longevity. Is prevention of overpopulation through
blocking scientifical advancements ethical? Judge for yourself, but take
into account that the alternative would be tolerance of evitable deaths of
human beings for the sake of political correctness. Independently of
resource problems that might or might not occur and need to be solved in
the future, this just can't justify "ethical" agendas which tolerate the
evitable death of human beings.

Eugenics was taught as scientific fact in the world's finest
universities until 1945, sanctioned in global court decisions,
and led to the sterilization in the 1920s and 1930s of more that
20,000 in the U.S., 45,000 in the U.K. and 250,000 in Germany.

Historical errors in eugenics, that unarguably took place, seem to be the
bioethicists' favorite tool against genetical research and similar
technologies, but the example of eugenics is irrationally taken out of
context if one considers that the only harm caused by eugenics could be
caused through forcing and misinforming individuals to use this technology.
Forcefully using any technology is as bad as forcefully banning it. Only
with political and legal pressure, conceptually flawed eugenics could cause
harm by forcing individuals to be sterilized. I'd make any bet that if
genetics or other forms of future medical science should ever cause any
harm to society, then governmental or other forms of institutional force
will have played a main role in causing that harm.

How much should parents be able to use such technologies to
design their offspring? What are the moral objections to design
of offspring that are most useful in initiating public
conversation? The present US and European policies allowing
infertile and fertile couples to do as much as they like with
genetic testing are rooted in reproductive rights.

How much? To any extend they deem appropriate. How much authority do
governments and the public have to tell parents what to do for their child
and what not? None. The only moral restrictions that do apply are that
parents are responsible for their decisions regarding the well-being of
their children. Obviously, parents alone always had and will always have
this responsibility for their own children.

And regarding human embryos: at any time the human embryo is a potential
human being. But potentiality is not actuality. The embryo in its early
stages is not much more or less a human being than human sperm/egg cells
before meiosis. The identity of a human being is its way of intelligent,
conscious, introspective thinking. For cloned human embryos, sufficient
methods already exist to diagnose genetical diseases or problems at an
early stage where the human brain, and even the vegetative neural system, a
prerequirement for feelings of any kind, has not developed. At this stage,
no human consciousness, self-introspectiveness, and similar thinking can
exist. Any other claims are rooted in emotionalisms or religious beliefs,
which may be tolerated, but which simply cannot be used as a public ethical
standards for governing the populace.

Before we can answer such questions there must be a comprehensive
global public health effort to regulate the spread of genetic
testing, and in particular an effort to establish global
cooperation in assessing the efficacy of genetic tests and the
relationship between particular genes and environments. There
must also be a new emphasis on retraining journalists,
politicians, and ministers about genetics so that genetic testing
will not always result in hysteria about eugenics.

Bioethics asks a lot of questions about future dangers and implications of
science, but today, has given very little answers, especially not in a
concrete and rational manner. Ironically, to answer such questions, the
only possible route for bioethics would be to advocate unlimited
scientifical research. Only then one can observe the factual implications
instead of imagining the possiblities. How else could it ever be possible
to either validate or contradict what today are not more than speculations?

Should prospective adopters or adoption agencies be able to order
genetic tests for children awaiting adoption? Should biological
parents be able to order genetic tests for their biological
children? Should the same standard prevail for each?

But, more important, should any governmental or religious institution, or
any person, for that matter, have the right to answer such questions, make
these decisions, and enforce them in the place of parents, sick and
disabled people, and generally, other individuals?

The third issue for the future is perhaps the most difficult one.
It is clear that the maldistribution of public resources in
health care cannot continue in the U.S. or other countries. The
U.S. spends billions on genetic research and biotechnology, yet
still is unable to spend pennies on public health prenatal
services for all pregnant women. Americans spend millions on
genetic research concerning intelligence, but find their
institutions unable to spend pennies to educate the world's
children to the point where comprehensive understanding of, and
informed consent for, genetic services is possible.

This is an interesting, valid point that I can agree to. Let's see how it
continues:

This is dangerous because it suggests that we hope for a future
in which nutrition, education and environmental issues are
sublimated to genetics or genomics or gene therapy.

The conclusion is dead wrong, however. The institution in control of the
future of these issues in America right now is the US government, since
they simply decided to take control of all these issues, which they were
never supposed to, or authorized by their own constitution, for that
matter. The educational and social systems are not failing because they are
doomed to fail, but because the government has no real motivation for doing
the best they can. A future privatization of education and healthcare would
be best, so private persons, institutions and competitive economy would be
in charge of solving these problems, instead of governmental force-backed,
slow bureaucratic systems. Therefore, stopping funding of scientifical
research, and at the same time stopping and removing any regulatory
bureaucracy in these areas, would be a great first step of stopping
government interventions into public areas it should never have taken over.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Valid "Bioethics"

The necessary ethical rules for medicine and human sciences were found and
established over two thousand years ago, by the first bioethicist, if you
want, known as Hippocrates. He claimed that nobody should willingly cause
any preventable human suffering or harm. This is the most fundamental rule
of medical ethics and the only necessary one. Considered rationally, this
does not include the potentiality of harmfulness of any future research,
without concrete evidence that can be pinned down by means of science,
reason and common sense.

Biotechnology is a growing industry and might soon become equivalent to the
IT revolution in numbers of growth. Therefore, perhaps Bioethics does have
its place as a profession in the future, but in a different form, being an
interesting side-branch profession related to biotechnology in the private
sector. Investigation of new trends in Biotechnology to determine the most
promising ones, and to consider future prospects and benefits for humanity
could be an important task. Also, if left alone by governments,
Biotechnology will surely develop forms and systems of responsible
self-regulation, much like the existing ones in today's Information
Technology. An example of genuinely responsible and constructive Bioethics
can be found at the website http://www.humancloning.org.

The institutions behind Bioethics

The problem with todays growing Bioethics "community" is that it is a
rather closed society of mainly government, academia and church
representatives, which urges to "promote a public dialogue on bioethics"
but doesn't really encourage open discussion - most bioethics sites are
known primarily to bioethic lobbyists and government workers.

The United States government was a primary driving force behind the efforts
to establish a Bioethics movement. By an executive order of Bill Clinton in
1995, an investigatory "National Bioethics Advisory Commitee" was first
founded, originally only for a term of two years. Since 1995, the term had
been extended by Mr. Clinton every two years, and the commitee kept growing
without much public attention. Today, the commision consists of 6 different
subcommitees, for legal issues, theological issues, philosophical and
ethical issues, medical issues, scientific issues, and one on social
issues. You can imagine how big this bureaucracy is and how much it is
going to cost american taxpayers. Also, efforts are being made to drive
Bioethics aspects into universities and public education, and everywhere
you can imagine.

Further institutions behind the Bioethics movement and regulatory attacks
against science and Biotech enterprises are the roman catholic church,
academical institutions, religious philosophers and theologists, and the
self-proclaimed global guardian of human rights, the UN, which uses UNESCO
initiatives to propagate Bioethics and related regulations internationally
through their legal and political agendas.

Here is a quote from the disturbing and alarming article, The betrayal of
Hippocrates, which I strongly advise you to read in order to find out much
more facts about the Bioethics movement than I was able treat under the
scope of this paper.

Q: These bioethicists -- is there an actual, for-real academic
track for that? Or are they kind of self-anointed?

A: Mainly what it is, is philosophy. There is no licensing to
become a bioethicist. A hairdresser has to be licensed; a
bioethicist doesn't. There are about 30 university postgraduate
courses where people can get masters in bioethics, and the
movement is only 30 years old.

Q: So it is not unlike being a reporter. You get to be one by
calling yourself one?

A: That's right. It's not like being a lawyer or a doctor. You
are one because you call yourself one, and I guess if people pay
attention and listen to what you have to say, you're right. And
if people don't pay attention to what you say, I guess you're
wrong.

Call to public action

Considering the trends I could observe, as well as the future importance of
Biotechnology for human life and well-being, I encourage concerned
individuals to take action, by voting and speaking out against questionable
government practices considering the regulation of medical advancements,
and participate in open discussions to bring Bioethics down to the facts
and work against the influencing of public opinion, hysteria, and towards
the demystification of important technology like genetics, stem cell
research, and cloning.

Especially if you are an concerned doctor, medical worker, investor,
biotech entrepreneur, or a sick or disabled person in need of new
technologies, you should engage in the discussion about new Biotechnology.
However, anyone is encouraged to contribute to this effort, as new medical
therapies would eventually help anyone, including you, to achieve a better
and longer life, or help you against serious disease you might get in the
future.

Some of the articles which were quoted as examples in this paper, can be
found at
http://www.med.upenn.edu/bioethics/02/GeneticsEthicsArticle03.shtml,
http://www.nuffield.org/bioethics/publication/humantissue/rep0000000186.html,
and
http://www.nuffield.org/bioethics/publication/transplants/rep0000000030.html.

Some of the few existing forums on Bioethics in which you may contribute,
can be found at:
http://www.med.upenn.edu/bioethic/cgi/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro (The forum
of the biggest Bioethics site on the web, bioethics.net), and perhaps some
forums at http://community.cnn.com/.

You are also encouraged to give your critical comments to sites such as
bioethics.gov, UNESCO, and private anti-biotechnology sites like
gene-watch.org.

Finally, please help contributing to the effort of urging representatives
in the areas of politics, education and public healthcare to de-regulate
medical sciences and limit the powers of the Bioethics movement to create
and influence legal policies, by signing the online petition at
http://www.petitiononline.com/biofree.

References:

U.S. Congress Bill S1595: To provide for the establishment of a Commission
to Promote a National Dialogue on Bioethics.
List of some FDA raids in the past

• SecretCodes

Follow Ups

Post Followup