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Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness

door President's Council on Bioethics

Andere auteurs: Leon Kass (Voorwoord)

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A groundbreaking new exploration of the promises and perils of biotechnology -- and the future of American society. Biotechnology offers exciting prospects for healing the sick and relieving suffering. But because our growing powers also enable alterations in the workings of the body and mind, they are becoming attractive to healthy people who would just like to look younger, perform better, feel happier, or become more "perfect." This landmark book -- the product of more than sixteen months of research and reflection by the members of the President's Council on Bioethics -- explores the profound ethical and social consequences of today's biotechnical revolution. Almost every week brings news of novel methods for screening genes and testing embryos, choosing the sex and modifying the behavior of children, enhancing athletic performance, slowing aging, blunting painful memories, brightening mood, and altering basic temperaments. But we must not neglect the fundamental question: Should we be turning to biotechnology to fulfill our deepest human desires? We want better children -- but not by turning procreation into manufacture or by altering their brains to gain them an edge over their peers. We want to perform better in the activities of life -- but not by becoming mere creatures of chemistry. We want longer lives -- but not at the cost of becoming so obsessed with our own longevity that we care little about future generations. We want to be happy -- but not by taking a drug that gives us happy feelings without the genuine loves, attachments, and achievements that are essential to true human flourishing. As we enjoy the benefits of biotechnology, members of the council contend, we need to hold fast to an account of the human being seen not in material or mechanistic or medical terms but in psychic, moral, and spiritual ones. By grasping the limits of our new powers, we can savor the fruits of the age of biotechnology without succumbing to its most dangerous temptations. Beyond Therapy takes these issues out of the narrow circle of bioethics professionals and into the larger public arena, where matters of this importance rightly belong.… (meer)
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review of
The President's Council on Bioethics's Beyond Therapy - Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 20-28, 2021

For my complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1345668-the-future-is-sooooo-yesterday?chap...

As I've commented previously, (review of Marcia Angell, M.D.'s The Truth About the Drug Companies - How They Deceive Us and What to do About It: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319242-big-pharma ),

"One of the many things that I've found annoying about the pseudo-dialog around what I call the PANDEMIC PANIC, the discussion about what's 'real' & what's a media-fabrication regarding COVID-19, has been some people's asking for "the science" that supports any position taken contrary to the mainstream narrative. This isn't because I'm opposed to science, although I do find it as potentially fallible as anything else, but because the people asking for it haven't generally, in my experience, much notion of what science is - nor wd they truly understand any science that they might encounter.

"In other words, again in my personal experience, the people asking for "the science": 1. aren't scientists, 2. aren't intellectuals, 3. don't even read bks - except for, perhaps, the occasional thriller or bk relevant to some subcultural concern such as bike-riding. Nor are they people likely to've ever asked for "the science" to support much of anything else they've ever encountered in their life. Nor wd they be able to explain "the science" that backs what're hypothetically 'their own' positions on anything. The responsibility is solely on the person whose opinion they're attacking to 'prove' w/ "the science" that what they're saying is 'true'."

In OTHER other words, I decided to read the occasional science bk. These people who want "the science" are basically just looking for sound bites to quote that come from their favorite propaganda sources - usually NPR. Such sound bite quoting presents a completely false front of being intellectually informed. I decided to go a step further & to read some medical science bks, admittedly targetted somewhat at the layperson, & to write reviews that wd express what I've learned from the bks & my opinions regarding these works. The 1st bk I chose was the above-mentioned The Truth About the Drug Companies wch completely validated positions that I'd already had for yrs.

This 2nd bk I chose as medical science to read was this one - wch I expected to be in an adversarial position in relation to. When I saw it for sale I practically groaned out loud at what I thought it might present. After all, "The President's Council on Bioethics" was formed during the George W. Bush administration. "W" was one of my most hated presidents, someone who felt free to advocate torture as AOK as USA practice. That was despicable almost beyond belief.

Imagine my surprise when I found Beyond Therapy to be thoughtful &, once again, essentially reinforcing many of the my own criticisms. As w/ so many non-fiction bks I choose to read, there's so much here of value that writing this review will be quite a task - but one that's very worthwhile.

The Council was created on November 28, 2001, by means of Executive Order 13237. There were 17 members of The President's Council on Bioethics. Their names & credentials are listed on pp xi-xiii. I doubt that people wanting "the science" wd find them lacking or 'debunked' or quacks or whatever:

Leon R. Kass, M.D., PH.D., Chairman
Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D.
Rebecca S. Dresser, J.D., M.S.
Daniel W. Foster, M.D.
Francis Fukuyama, Ph.D.
Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D.
Robert P. George, J.D., D.Phil.
Mary Ann Glendon, J.D., M.Comp.L.
Alfonzo Gómez-Labo, Dr. phil.
William B. Hurlbut, M.D.
Charles Krauthammer, M.D.
William F. May, Ph.D.
Paul McHugh, M.D.
Gilbert C. Meilaender, Ph.D.
Janet D. Rowley, M.D.
Michael J. Sandel, D.Phil.
James Q. Wilson, Ph.D.

I'd never heard of any of these people - but there's no reason why I wd've. They're mostly professors. Meilaender is a "Professor of Christian Ethics". Wilson is a "Reagan Professor of Public Policy". While their credentials are of the type widely respected in our society they're not necessarily ones I entirely trust: Law, Government, Journalism, Religion, & Medicine are all hypothetically based in deep ethical principles but how often is that actually the case? W/ reservations in mind, I approached this bk wondering what duplicitous logic might be presented to justify crimes against humanity. NONETHELESS, I found it to actually present its case(s) w/ calm, considered integrity.

Readers of this review might be wondering what any of this has to do w/ the so-called Covid-19 pandemic & the various actions that've been hyped as protecting the general public. After all, this report was presented on October 15, 2003 - 16 yrs before Covid. The importance of this report lies in its analysis of the ethical problems to be encountered w/ future medicine. That future was in-progress then & that future is in-progress now. Mark Lynas published a blog entry on December 17, 2020, entitled "Yes, some COVID vaccines use genetic engineering. Get over it." (https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some-covid-vaccines-use-genetic-engineering-get-over-it/ ) As the title indicates, the author thinks that this genetic engineering is fine. Nonetheless, there are other people who are concerned about the ethical implications of some medical directions - wch include genetic engineering.

The beginning of the Council's October 15, 2003, "Letter of Transmittal to the President", written by the Council's Chairman, Leon R. Kass, M.D., is as follows:

"I am pleased to present to you Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, a report of the President's Council on Bioethics.

"The product of more than sixteen months of research, reflection, and deliberation, we hape this report will prove a worthy contribution to public understanding of the important questions it considers. In it, we have sought to live up to the charge you gave us when you created this Council, namely, "to undertake fundamental inquiry into the human and moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and technology" and "to facilitate a greater understanding of bioethical issues."

"Biotechnology offers exciting and promising prospects for healing the sick and relieving the suffering. But exactly because of their impressive powers to alter the workings of body and mind, the "dual uses" of the same technologies make them attractive also to people who are not sick but who would use them to look younger, perform better, feel happier, or become more "perfect."" - p xv

Later in the same letter, some reservations appear:

"We want better children—but not by turning procreation into manufacture or by altering their brains to gain them an edge over their peers. We want to perform better in the activities of life—but not by becoming mere creatures of our chemists or by turning ourselves into tools designed to win or achieve in inhuman ways. We want longer lives—but not at the cost of living carelessly or shallowly with diminished aspiration for living well, and not by becoming people so obsessed with our own longevity that we care little about the next generations. We want to be happy—but not because of a drug that gives us happy feelings without the real loves, attachment, and achievements that are essential for true human flourishing." - p xvii

How many people have given much thought to the above considerations? Entirely too few IMO (In My Opinion) - including those who clamor for "the science". Yes, let's have "the science" - but let's not act as if all science inevitably generates change for the better.

Definitions of "biotechnology" are given in a footnote on p 1:

"These range from "engineering and biological study of relationships between human beings and machines" (Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary, 1988), to "biological science when applied especially in genetic engineering and recombinant DNA technology" (Mirriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary, 2003), to "the use of biological processes to solve problems or make useful products" (Glossary provided by BIO, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, www.bio.org, 2003). In the broader sense of the term that we follow here, older technologies would include fermentation (used to bake bread and brew beer) and plant and animal hybridization. Newer biotechnologies would include, among others, processes to produce genetically engineered crops, to repair genetic defects using genomic knowledge, to develop new drugs based on knowledge of biochemistry or molecular biology, and to improve biological capacities using nanotechnology. They include also the products obtained by these processes: nucleic acids and proteins, drugs, genetically modified cells, tissues derived from stem cells, biomechanical devices, etc." - p 1

"In this sense, it appears as a most recent and vibrant expression of the technological spirit, a desire and disposition rationally to understand, order, predict, and (ultimately) control the events and workings of nature, all pursued for the sake of human benefit." - p 2

This was the type of rhetoric that I was expecting, one untempered by acknowledgment of things that can go wrong. Note no mention of bioweaponry, e.g.. Note no mention of "control" as imprisonment. But it isn't long before the authors redeem themselves:

"Biotechnologies are already available as instruments of bioterrorism (for example, genetically engineered super-pathogens or drugs that can destroy the immune system or erase memory), as agents of social control (for example, tranquilizers for the unruly or fertility-blockers for the impoverished)" - p 6

or look at endnote 37 on p 100:

"See, for example, Eberstadt, M., "Why Ritalin Rules," Policy Review 94, April/May 1999; DeGrandpre, R. Ritalin Nation: Rapid-Fire Culture and the Transformation of Human Consciousness, New York: Norton, 1999; and Hancock, L., "Mother's Little Helper," Newsweek, 18 March 1996."

I'm sure biotechnology has come a long way in the 18 yrs since this bk was written. Even then, many uses were somewhat 'normalized':

"The already widely accepted "beyond therapy" uses of biomedical technologies include: pills for sleep and wakefulness, weight loss, hair growth, and birth control; surgery to remove fat and wrinkles, to shrink thighs, and to enlarge breasts; and procedures to straighten teeth and select the sex of offspring. These practices are already big business. In 2002 Americans spent roughly one billion dollars on drugs used to treat baldness, about ten times the amount spent on scientific research to find a cure for malaria, a disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people worldwide." - footnote, pp 8-9

I'm reminded that I met a Danish guy (he was filled w/ cheese) in 1994 in Europe who told me a story about camping out in Africa & getting malaria. He became so debilitated that he was too weak to try to go somewhere for help. He was alone. Finally, some local tribespeople came by, saw what was wrong & showed him a nearby plant to eat. That healed him enuf to recover. He's suffered from return bouts since but if it hadn't been for that plant he probably wd've died. Is that plant known about by 'Western Medicine'?

"We shall not here consider biotechnologies as instruments of bioterrorism or of mass population control. The former topic is highly specialized and tied up with matters of national security, an area beyond our charge and competence. Also, although the practical and political difficulties they raise are enormous, the ethical and social issues are relatively uncomplicated. The main question about bioterrorism is not what to think about it but how to prevent it. And the use of tranquilizing aerosols for crowd control or contraceptive additions to the drinking water, unlikely prospects in liberal democratic societies like our own, raise few issues beyond the familiar one of freedom and coercion." - p 10

Then again, this Council was created by President George W. Bush. "Liberal democratic societies" don't advocate & use torture either but Bush did &, as far as I know, it didn't start or stop w/ him. While "the ethical and social issues" may be "relatively uncomplicated" for people who HAVE ethics - that doesn't mean that the people calling the shots in a so-called 'liberal democratic society' have those ethics. While I don't know of "tranquilizing aerosols for crowd control" that doesn't mean that militarized police & weapons that can damage crowd hearing aren't just as insidious, if not more so. There are those who argue that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist whose Planned Parenthood program was designed to reduce breeding amongst the poor. I'm pro- Planned Parenthood but I still think the criticism is valid.

"It reflects humankind's deep disatisfaction with natural limits and its ardent desire to overcome them." - pp 10-11

"When René Descartes, in his famous Discourse on Method, set forth the practical purpose for the new science he was founding, he spoke explicitly of our becoming "like masters and owners of nature"" - p 11

I don't like that enslaving attitude. We are a part of nature, nature is much bigger than any individual intellect or even the collective human intellect. What if instead of enslaving something that we deny being a part of we tried to learn how to appreciate & work w/ its vast capabilities?

The authors address the important distinction between therapy & enhancement:

"Gene therapy for cystic fibrosis or Prozac for major depression is fine; insertion of genes to enhance intelligence or steroids for Olympic athletes is, to say the least, questionable." - p 14

But even Prozac is subjected to further scrutiny - & I think rightfully so.

As a literate person, I enjoy & appreciate that the Council quotes literary sources. For one thing, by doing so, they're acknowledging writing as a thing that speaks of & to the culture it's produced in. Sometimes I wonder whether that respect is vanishing from our society.

"Dreams of human perfection—and the terrible consequences of pursuing it at all costs—are the themes of Greek tragedy, as well as of "The Birth-mark," the Hawthorne short story with which the President's Council on Bioethics began its work." - p 18

& what about death? This is another subject that I've been somewhat philosophically preoccupied w/ for the last 2 yrs. When I went to a dr about Diabetes Type II she immediately tried to terrorize me w/ extreme fears of impending death. I explained to her, truthfully, that I'm not afraid of death as much as I am of having my quality of life degrade further as I approach it. If I had followed the dr's attempted orders the quality of my life wd've deteriorated substantially & her income wd've increased proportionately.

"Curiously, we may even be more afraid of death than our forebears, who lived before modern medicine began successfully to do battle with it." - p 18

"In Chapter Two, we consider the pursuit of "better children," using techniques of genetic screening and selection to improve their native endowments that might make them more accomplished, attentive, or docile." - p 21

Docility might be more convenient for control freaks but I wdn't put it in the same category as "accomplished" & "attentive".

Adding to the overall conventional credibility of this report:

"we commissioned presentations from a wide array of scientists working or writing in the pertinent fields of biology and biotechnology: preimplantation genetic diagnosis and genetic enhancement (Gerald Schatten and Francis Collins); choosing sex of children (Arthur Haney and Nicholas Eberstadt); drugs to modify behavior in children (Lawrence Diller and Steven Hyman); genetic enhancement of muscle strength and vigor (H. Lee Sweeney); genetic enhancement of athletic performance (Theodore Friedmann); aging and longevity research (Steven Austad and S. Jay Olshansky); memory, and drugs that might improve or blunt it (James McGaugh and Daniel Schacter); and mood-brightening drugs (Peter Kramer and Carl Elliott)." - p 22

I wonder, however, if it might not be useful to study what cultures that don't use 'Western Medicine' have to show us. E.G.: are there memory problems in Amazonian tribes? It seems to me that memory problems in the society I live in are fantastically widespread & getting worse every day. Is that the case everywhere or are the drugs commonly used & the devices relied upon not a major cause of memory dysfunction? & what about HAPPINESS?, another subject that I'm preoccupied w/. Is it in such short supply in all cultures? If not, what distinguishes the cultures where there's greater happiness from the culture I see around me?

The bk is structured to address central purposes for biotechnology. Chapter 2 is entitled "Better Children".

"To help our children on their way and make them strong in body and mind, we clothe and feed them, so that they get rest, fresh air, and exercise, and take great pains regarding their education. Beyond ordinary schooling, we give them swimming and piano lessons, enroll them in Scouts or Little League, and help them acquire a variety of skills—artistic, intellectual, and social."

[..]

"Needless to say, the thing is easier said than done" - p 27

"For what, exactly, is a good or a better child?

"Is it a child who is more able and talented? If so, able in what and talented how? Is it a child with better character? If so, having which traits or virtues? More obedient or more independent? More sensitive or more enduring? More daring or more measured? Better behaved or more assertive? Is it a child with the right attitude and disposition toward the world? If so, should he or she tend toward more reverence or skepticism, high-mindedness or toleration, the love of justice or the love of mercy?" - pp 10-11

For my complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1345668-the-future-is-sooooo-yesterday?chap... ( )
  tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
Contents:Biotechnology and the pursuit of happiness
Better children
Superior performance
Ageless bodies
Happy souls
"Beyond therapy" : general reflections.
  cpcs-acts | Sep 24, 2020 |
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Kass, LeonVoorwoordSecundaire auteuralle editiesbevestigd
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A groundbreaking new exploration of the promises and perils of biotechnology -- and the future of American society. Biotechnology offers exciting prospects for healing the sick and relieving suffering. But because our growing powers also enable alterations in the workings of the body and mind, they are becoming attractive to healthy people who would just like to look younger, perform better, feel happier, or become more "perfect." This landmark book -- the product of more than sixteen months of research and reflection by the members of the President's Council on Bioethics -- explores the profound ethical and social consequences of today's biotechnical revolution. Almost every week brings news of novel methods for screening genes and testing embryos, choosing the sex and modifying the behavior of children, enhancing athletic performance, slowing aging, blunting painful memories, brightening mood, and altering basic temperaments. But we must not neglect the fundamental question: Should we be turning to biotechnology to fulfill our deepest human desires? We want better children -- but not by turning procreation into manufacture or by altering their brains to gain them an edge over their peers. We want to perform better in the activities of life -- but not by becoming mere creatures of chemistry. We want longer lives -- but not at the cost of becoming so obsessed with our own longevity that we care little about future generations. We want to be happy -- but not by taking a drug that gives us happy feelings without the genuine loves, attachments, and achievements that are essential to true human flourishing. As we enjoy the benefits of biotechnology, members of the council contend, we need to hold fast to an account of the human being seen not in material or mechanistic or medical terms but in psychic, moral, and spiritual ones. By grasping the limits of our new powers, we can savor the fruits of the age of biotechnology without succumbing to its most dangerous temptations. Beyond Therapy takes these issues out of the narrow circle of bioethics professionals and into the larger public arena, where matters of this importance rightly belong.

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