From the WSJ Opinion Archives
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Good Friday, Great Books
The President's Council on Bioethics publishes a reading list.
Dolly the cloned sheep, whose stuffed remains were put on display this week in Edinburgh, would not be thought the standard jumping-off point for Good Friday reflections. But the science that made Dolly possible inevitably raises the prospect of human cloning--and forces us to consider, once again, our most fundamental beliefs about the meaning and dignity of human life. For Christians, such thoughts will have a special resonance on Easter weekend.
To the debate over science and man's destiny the President's Council on Bioethics has just added its own contribution: a booklist.
A booklist? Not only that, but one that reaches beyond science to include everything from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins and excerpts from the Book of Job to the first three chapters of sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson's memoir. Also included is a Nathaniel Hawthorne story ("The Birth-Mark")--the same story with which Dr. Leon Kass, the council's chairman, opened the council's first meeting in January 2002. The selections, which include introductions and sample study questions, are all accessible by clicking the "bookshelf" section on the council Web site (www.bioethics.gov).
These works are meant to help the citizens of a free society ponder the ethical dilemmas posed by the biotech revolution. And the assumption is clear that while science tells us many things, it can claim no special competence on the moral question of what ought (or ought not) to be done in its name. As Dr. Kass puts it in his statement of purpose: "With the deepest human questions on the table we should be eager to avail ourselves of the wisdom contained in the great religious, literary, and philosophical traditions."
"The Birth-Mark" affords an excellent example. Though Hawthorne wrote his story a century and a half before we even had the word "bioethics," the themes it sounds endure. The plot line is chillingly straightforward: A scientist succeeds in removing a slight blemish from his wife's face, but the cure ends up killing her. Anyone who doubts Hawthorne's relevance to the bioethical dilemmas of our day need only click onto the transcript of that first council meeting (where "The Birth-Mark" was its assigned text) and read the differing and spirited personal reactions to that story.
In the midst of a political universe that generally reduces the question of ethical boundaries to "yes" or "no" responses, it's easy to lose the larger context. And the attack on the World Trade Center, which did succeed in pushing stem cells and cloning from the headlines, threatened to marginalize the entire effort. Yet one of the little ironies to emerge from the rubble of 9/11, Dr. Kass suggests, is a "deepened appreciation of human finitude," which he sees as having contributed to a national mood that is today more "hospitable for serious moral reflection."
To the pressing and contentious bioethical concerns of the day, the council's booklist yields no answers. Its aim is both more modest and much higher: ensuring that that the right questions are asked.
