Tuesday, February 2, 2010

In the brief article by Callahan he's proposing that their be a new category added to the discipline of ethical theory which would be ideological theory and I totally agree with him. I agree because simply whenever new technology is invented it will always stir up some kind of response whether it be a positive response or a negative one. Of course, with the negative response, people being people, will always raise the ethical question whether or not it ( the new technology) is immoral or not which raises a whole new set of questions. Ideology theory will give these new questions a field of their own to be studied and debated over much like what we are doing now. Then we have Brown's article where he states in his opening paragraph that when an issue has become political it is just another way of saying it has already fallen from grace now the issue is being tarnished by the involvement of politics. The issue at hand in this article is bioethics and and how biopolitics cannot help but be intertwined with bioethics. Thus, politicizing bioethics and then separating them into three politicization categories the first being liberal politicization in which bioethics must strive for both " a substantial degree of objectivity" and "freedom from political influence". The second one being communitarian politicization which begins with the critique of the liberal individual and with an autonomous subject who makes rational choices that are free from social constraints. The third being republican politicization which insist that order can only established through politics itself. Yes, this one way of generalizing the involvement of politics in bioethics, but I firmly believe that we should let bio medicine have a broad lei way in whatever direction it must take in order further life expectancy and eliminate any negativity from life in a medical sense. Now onto Fortuns book and I must say that I had an extreme tough time of picking it up after reading the first chapter, but now I must say that when I started to read in it the second time this term . I could not put the book down until I was done with the reading assignment. The part that caught my attention was the part where Kari Stefansson was mentioned in the same sentence with Mengele and Goring. I mean one could take this to one extreme and be horrified about the grouping of men that he is being categorized with or one can look at it from a scientific approach in which these men were trying to push the boundaries of medical science. Just that the Nazi's really violated and crossed all ethical boundaries in their pursuit of obtaining medical knowledge and I agree that they did. But, if they(the Nazi's) had won the war would these guys be considered monsters or pioneers in medical science that pushed the limits of our knowledge. Its sounds kind of ere.

2 comments:

  1. When Brown talks about things falling from grace because of politicization he's criticizing others who say that and that's because he knows, as you do, that there is hardly anything that's free of politics. So he's say let's try understand the difference between "good" and "not so good" politicization. What's interesting in what you say later about giving biomedicine broad leeway is the difficult question we will always face in particular cases of such medicine: just HOW MUCH leeway should we give and how are we to decide and by what politically-influenced process what that "HOW MUCH" is to be? On another matter: glad to hear that Fortun's turning out to be an enticing "read" for you. And on a final matter: do we (as far as we've read in Fortun) any evidence about Kari that would lead us to understand why at least one Icelander saw fit to put him in the same sentence with Mengele and Goering? That's nasty company to be associated with.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, it nasty company to be associated with! And yes! That is the question "HOW MUCH?" just are we supposed to give and is acceptable to us as an society? But, let me pose another question to you. How far does one go to save the life of a family member? I say that if we have the technology to so and it only cost an embryo, donated by another family member, than let it be done!

    ReplyDelete