Life, Liberty, and Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics by Leon R. Kass

From the Publisher

"At the outset of Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity, Leon Kass gives us a status report on where we stand today: "Human nature itself lies on the operating table, ready for alteration, for eugenic and psychic 'enhancement,' for wholesale redesign. In leading laboratories, academic and industrial, new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills, while on the street their evangelists are zealously prophesying a posthuman future. For anyone who cares about preserving our humanity, the time has come for paying attention."" Trained as a medical doctor and a biochemist, Dr. Kass has become one of our most provocative thinkers on bioethical issues. Now, in this brave and searching book, he also establishes himself as a prophetic voice summoning us to think deeply about the new biomedical technologies threatening to take us back to the future envisioned by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. As in Huxley's dystopia, where life has been smoothed out by genetic manipulation, psychoactive drugs and high-tech amusement, our own accelerating efforts to master reproduction and genetic endowment, to retard aging, and to conquer illness, imperfection and even death are animated by our most humane and progressive aspirations. But we are walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia, Kass believes, without pausing to assess the potential damage to our humanity from this brave new biology.

Publishers Weekly

For many people, the brave new world of biotechnology promises a utopian society where we will be free from diseases because of our manipulation of the genetic code. According to Kass, chairman of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, this vision of the future involves dehumanization, because the fundamental principles of cloning and stem cell research involve altering our human nature so dramatically that we are no longer human but posthuman. Fundamental to our human nature, Kass contends, is our human dignity, "our awareness of need, limitation, and mortality to craft a way of being that has engagement, depth, beauty, virtue, and meaning." Modern biology, he argues, has persuaded us that our embodiment is a fact of life to be overcome through germline manipulation or other biotechnological techniques. Through stimulating examinations of genetic research, cloning and active euthanasia, Kass makes a case that, in spite of its many promises, biotechnology has left humanity out of its equation, often debasing human dignity rather than celebrating it. In the end, he calls for a new bioethics and a new biology that will provide "an ethical account of human flourishing based on a biological account of human life as lived, not just physically, but psychically, socially and spiritually." Although some will object to Kass's importing the spiritual into the biological, his cry will strike others as a clarion call to protect human freedom from the excesses of biotechnology. Still others will be wary of his influence on the present administration. (Sept.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

In order for society to protect itself against runaway biotechnology, Kass (social thought, U. of Chicago) says it is most important to recognize which human goods are in danger and worth defending. He argues that the scientific-technological approach to the world and to life have transformed the view of the meaning of humanity, and people are in jeopardy of forgetting what they have to lose. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents