Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
I’m not on the animal-rights bandwagon (though I think there are interesting questions to be asked about intelligence in some primates). I generally have no strong objections to those who are, though I think they’re on the wrong track. I am offended by irresponsible groups like ALF and PETA, and think their illegal acts should be strongly punished, and I am equally offended by false accusations often raised against animal experimenters (though I also agree there have been lapses that should themselves be corrected and punished). In general, I think that the animal-rights activist community is as believable, mature, and responsible as the anti-choice activist community - which is sad, because in many ways their issues and arguments are in fact better grounded.
However, I’m always amused by and contemptuous of the labels on “green” foods and products self-righteously proclaiming that “this product was not tested on animals”. (Today I tried some shaving cream, from a cosmetics company run by two gay men, which was reassuringly labeled “tested only on boyfriends, not animals”. Great product, by the way.) There are only two things that can mean, and they both are predicated on the assumption that you’re an idiot.
Many had (somewhat) higher hopes than in the past when Dr. Edmund Pellegrino was recently named to take over the chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics from the execrable Leon Kass. And early returns suggested a freer sense of intellectualism within that body: more-open dissent, in distinction to the persecution dissenters faced under Kass, and a broader range of opinion flowing out of the Council under Pellegrino. But it was too much to expect that the overwhelmingly conservative membership would now incline to any higher sense of purpose, or more-inclusive understanding of what bioethics should be, than in the past. Today, Council member Robert P. George has disgraced himself - while acting in his personal capacity, not within the Council, it should be noted - by not merely endorsing but campaigning for anti-gay discrimination in company with conservative religious bigots.
George, I emphasize again, was acting outside the Council, in a private capacity. And the position he takes - for a Constitutional amendment prohibiting civil rights (marriage) for gay citizens nationwide - is not outside the range of common opinion in these degraded times, though it is certainly an ugly and shameful one. His conduct does not strictly reflect upon the Council, and certainly not its Chair, who, to his credit, has reversed the policy of retaliation upon holders of unapproved opinions that had been pursued by Kass. As a mere exercise of the right of opinion, or of personal political prerogative, George’s action is immune to reproach. So I am not arguing that the Council is implicated in this action, or that George’s endorsement of official discrimination directly incriminates anyone but himself. However, I cannot overlook what this says about the kind and quality of Council membership, and its ramifications for public bioethics in what it is increasingly hard to regard as a liberal democracy.
