EPPC - Eric Cohen RSS Feed

The President Politicizes Stem-Cell Research

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EST

Yesterday President Barack Obama issued an executive order that authorizes expanded federal funding for research using stem cells produced by destroying human embryos. The announcement was classic Obama: advancing radical policies while seeming calm and moderate, and preaching the gospel of civility while accusing those who disagree with the policies of being "divisive" and even "politicizing science."

In the Shadow of Progress

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST

Why are the wealthiest and most comfortable people in human history the least likely to want children? What is lost when we relieve human sadness by altering the chemical balance of the brain? What kind of civilization will we become if we seek cures for the sick by destroying human embryos? In this evening event at EPPC, Eric Cohen discussed these questions and others from his new book, In the Shadow of Progress. He was joined by William Kristol of the Weekly Standard and William Saletan of Slate. Leon R. Kass moderated. Audio of the event is now available.

In the Shadow of Progress

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST

We live in an age of unprecedented human mastery -- over birth and death, body and mind, nature and human nature. In every realm of life, science and technology have brought remarkable advances and improvements: we are healthier, wealthier, and more comfortable than ever before. But our gratitude for the benefits of progress increasingly mixes with concern about the meaning and consequences of our newfound powers.

For the Love of the Game

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST

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.

The Ends of Science

Fri, 11 May 2007 00:00:00 EST

Faced with the contingencies of nature and history, perhaps we need to regain the kind of equanimity that faith often inspires. Faced with a world that so often seems absurd, perhaps we should not place all our hopes in science alone. In our hunger for still waters, nature offers no proof that man’s redemptive hopes are justified, but also no proof that everything is hopeless.

Unthinkable Thoughts

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST

Fear and trembling about the dark side of modern technology have been with us for centuries--from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic remorse. Fred Iklé’s new book, Annihilation from Within is a sobering exploration of the perils of progress.

Health Care in Three Acts

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST

Americans say they are very worried about health care -- but what exactly are they worried about? Untangling that question is harder than it looks. It is difficult to speak of health care as a single coherent challenge, let alone to propose a single workable solution. In fact, American health care faces three fairly distinct predicaments, affecting three fairly distinct portions of the population—the poor, the middle class, and the elderly—and each of them calls for a distinct approach.

In Whose Image Shall We Die?

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST

The problem of living well with death is central to many of the quandaries of bioethics, from assisted suicide to organ transplants to embryo research. In confronting these very modern medical dilemmas, we need to recover some ancient wisdom about mortality. By considering some of our culture’s paradigmatic images of the good death—the remembered death of Jacob, the tranquil death of Socrates, the redeemed death of Christ, the opposed death of Franklin, and the crisis of death in Camus’s myth of Sisyphus—Eric Cohen seeks lessons for living well and dying well.

The Human Difference

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST

In the contest for oddest pronouncement in a State of the Union address, high marks should go to President Bush’s call last January for a national ban on "creating human-animal hybrids." Yet the President’s call to action did not come out of nowhere. If it seemed strange, that is only because we live in genuinely strange times.

A Clarifying Five Years

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST

During the recent congressional debates on stem-cell legislation, a small group in the House of Representatives worked hard to kill a bill that had passed the Senate unanimously. What exactly were these members voting against when they chose to stop the Specter-Santorum bill? They voted against helping American scientists find ways to obtain the benefits of embryonic-stem-cell research and so-called "therapeutic cloning" without the moral hazards and political controversy. They voted against finding common ground.

Stem the Tide

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST

This week, the Senate will take up legislation already passed by the House (H.R. 810) to authorize federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells harvested by destroying human embryos left over in fertility clinics. Since August 2001, under a policy established by President Bush, federally funded research has been limited to embryonic stem cell lines that already existed. If the bill passes, the president will veto it.

Life and Death -- Principles and Politics

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST

In the past three decades, the "life issues" -- abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, and embryo-destroying research -- have reshaped American law, politics, and culture. Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor at National Review, considers each of these issues and the larger question of the fundamental human right to life in his new book, The Party of Death. His book has already inspired impassioned debate -- with some embracing his argument and others challenging it. Audio is now available of this event in which Mr. Ponnuru was joined by EPPC’s Eric Cohen in discussing these issues and their role in modern American politics.

Stem Cells Without Moral Corruption

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST

Cloning will always be morally corrupt because it requires deliberately creating and destroying thousands of human embryos. At the same time, the current effort in Congress to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to include embryos left over in fertility clinics will never satisfy the scientists, because such stem cells will not give them the genetic control they want over the cells. The real opportunity now before us is to find a scientific alternative to research cloning, one that gives us the stem cells we desire without the ethical violations we abhor.

Why Have Children?

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST

In the most modern parts of the modern world, three aspects of fertility do seem historically unprecedented and clearly important. First, there is no stigma attached to being childless. Second, children are no longer economic assets; rather, they are economic burdens. Third, fertility control is now both uneventful and virtually absolute. Children are thus culturally optional, economically burdensome, and technologically avoidable.

Stem-Cell Sense

Fri, 26 May 2006 00:00:00 EST

A year after the House vote on the Castle-DeGette bill to overturn limits to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, very little remains of the arguments that seemed so persuasive then. On the contrary, developments in techniques to derive embryonic-like stem cells without requiring the destruction of embryos have given new ammunition to supporters of the current policy. The momentum has shifted firmly against the Castle-DeGette bill, even if most advocates continue to spout the same arguments, and many in the press continue to parrot them.

Celling Spin

Wed, 03 May 2006 00:00:00 EST

For connoisseurs of stem-cell spin, recent weeks have offered a feast. To advance the perception of American science in crisis, Jason Owen-Smith and Jennifer McCormick in the April 2006 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology compare the output of American scientists to that of their counterparts in the rest of the world combined, hoping to obscure the inconvenient fact that no single country comes close to challenging America’s dominance of embryonic stem-cell research.

Biotechnology and the Spirit of Capitalism

Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 EST

The moral meaning of capitalism has vexed us for centuries, and the age of biotechnology has only added to the perplexities. From selling human eggs to marketing impotence drugs to reality television shows about cosmetic surgery, bio-capitalism is becoming increasingly important. Eric Cohen looks back at capitalism’s origins and ahead to capitalism’s future, and wonders whether the new commerce of the body may force us to reconsider the moral aspirations and moral limits of capitalism itself.

Embryonic Problems

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:00:00 EST

If partisanship can be put aside, it may be possible to advance research in a way that all citizens can embrace, and to replace the corruption of cloning with responsible science. That is an outcome that should appeal to everybody. And it would be a silver lining in a scandal that has tainted a broad swath of science -- and not only in Korea.

The New Atlantis, Winter 2006

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:00:00 EST

The latest issue of The New Atlantis includes major essays on Man, Mind and Machines and the challenge to define "human"; a search for the connection between domestic tranquility and our domestic technology; how the blogger "Davids" are slaying the mainstream media "Goliath"; the scientific corruption at the heart of the Korean stem cell scandal and much more.

The Many Faces of Technology

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 00:00:00 EST

Technology in its many guises was a central theme of President Bush’s State of the Union address--from Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to the production of revolutionary energy technologies to the need to ban the creation of human-animal hybrids. In other words: Technology as mortal threat. Technology as political liberator. Technology as moral danger.