How Brave A New World?
There is nothing "brave" or beautiful about the biotechnised world we are entering, says one of America's best-known bioethicists. This is a commencement speech made by Dr Leon Kass at St John's College, in Annapolis, Maryland, earlier this year. Dr Kass, a physician and philosopher, was the chairman of the President's Council for Bioethics from 2002 to 2005. He teaches at the University of Chicago. Here is an excerpt: "The greatest moral challenges headed our way do not in fact come from hate-filled fanatics threatening death and destruction. They come rather from well meaning scientists and technologists offering life, pleasure, and enhancement. They are the by-products of modernity’s noble and humanitarian quest to conquer nature for the relief of man’s estate. They are, in a word, the challenges of bioethics, challenges to our humanity arising from burgeoning new technological powers to intervene in the bodies and minds of human beings. " This is an ...