The biotechnology revolution, though promising enormous returns in human well-being, is rapidly expanding our powers of control over our bodies, our thoughts, and our world. How we acquire these powers and how we decide to use them are questions not only for science, but also moral and political questions of profound importance to the future of democratic society and the dignity of human life. EPPC's program on Bioethics and American Democracy is an effort to clarify our responsibilities to future Americans by encouraging much needed moral and political deliberation on emerging biotechnologies.
Bioethics Policy Guide
UNESCO Bioethics Chair
The New Atlantis
The Embryo Question
The Ethics of Enhancement
Eugenics: Past and Future
Aging and Human Dignity
Latest News & Publications
Indignity and Bioethics Steven Pinker discovers the human-dignity cabal. By Yuval Levin Thursday, May 15, 2008
Human dignity has long been a contentious subject in American bioethics. A frequently employed if ill-defined concept in European political life, in international law, and in the ethical tradition of the West, dignity has had a particularly hard time finding its precise meaning and place in the Anglo-American sphere.
For the Love of the Game Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, the Mitchell Report, and the adulteration of American sports. By Eric Cohen, Leon R. Kass Tuesday, March 11, 2008
While the Mitchell Report about steroids in major-league baseball gives voice to a widespread concern about the disturbing effects of performance-enhancing drugs on modern athletics, it also demonstrates our inability (or unwillingness) to confront the deeper sources of the trouble. We seem to know that biotechnological enhancement is a threat to the "integrity of the game," but we cannot really articulate why. The reason is that we have lost an understanding of what makes sports truly admirable, and hence worthy of our attention and our devotion.
Two Aspirin and Call Us in 2008 The GOP health care consensus. By Yuval Levin Thursday, September 27, 2007
The 2008 presidential campaign has seen the Democrats more outspoken on health care than they have been since the early 1990s. The three frontrunners have produced health care proposals that would greatly increase the role of the government in funding and managing the nation's health insurance system, and all constantly speak about health care on the stump.
A Doctor, But Whose? Diagnosing the Disorder in the Surgeon General's Office By Yuval Levin Monday, August 27, 2007
The Bush administration has gone through several minor scandals involving the surgeon general, including one this summer, and the Clinton administration had its share as well. The predictable theatrics and hand-wringing surrounding these controversies have tended to obscure some simple questions: What really is the surgeon general's purpose today? And how did the office come to occupy the peculiar role it has? The answers have a lot to tell us about the politics of public health and the culture wars.
The New Atlantis is an effort to clarify the nation's moral and political understanding of all areas of technology, with a special emphasis on bioethics. The quarterly journal is an attempt to make sense of the larger questions surrounding technology and human nature, and the practical questions of governing and regulating science -- especially where the moral stakes are high and the political divides are deep.
In the latest issue:
The Editors on John McCain and the Stem Cell Debate. Yuval Levin on the past and future of the “party of science.” O. Carter Snead on brain scans and the conflicted aspirations of neuroscience. Matthew B. Crawford on the dangers of a mindless brain science. Cheryl Miller on the lively and fractious community of “infertiles.” Thomas W. Merrill reads Descartes’ Discourse on Method. Jeremy Lott on suburbs, bomb shelters, and bottled water. Christy Hall Robinson on celebrity patients as advocates. James C. Capretta on why health care records are so low-tech. Caitrin Nicol on predictions of robotic intimacy. David Franz on the utopian origins of Dilbert's sorkspace. George Mitchell on drugs in baseball.
