Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT.
The increasing reliance upon, and perhaps the growing public and professional skepticism about, the special expertise of bioethicists suggests the need to consider the limits of moral expertise. For all the talk about method in bioethics, we, bioethicists, are still rather far off the mark in understanding what we are doing, even when we may be going about what we are doing fairly well. Quite often, what is most fundamentally at stake, but equally often insufficiently acknowledged, are inherently political, essentially contested visions of the most compelling and attractive forms of life for individuals and social organization. The current situation in bioethics parallels similar debates in eighteenth-century jurisprudence, especially Jeremy Bentham's withering critique of the prevalent forms of judicial argument and his own, equally unsuccessful, attempt to develop a decision-making procedure in ethics that would operate on a plane above politics. The risk, both then and now, is that we will fail to appreciate the wide range of reasonable disagreement that will remain past the point of extended reflection and discussion.
Advice from bioethicists increasingly is sought by those who wish to understand and resolve ethical problems arising within the practice of medicine, the conduct of biomedical research, and the promotion and protection of the public's health. Expert panels and advisory councils are convened; working papers are commissioned; and institutions and professions of various sorts rely upon an array of interdisclipinary scholars for their special expertise.
The opinions of bioethicists presumably are sought for other reasons as well, and knowledgeable observers are right to suspect as much. Politicians may want the intervention of ethics advisors in order to postpone decisions on controversial matters, or they may want to burnish their own conclusions with the imprimatur of like-minded academics. Scientists and corporations may feel that such consultations in advance are necessary for the public acceptance of their activities, or, should things go badly, hope that having retained the services of experts will show that they met the tests of due diligence. Journalists well may feel that the observations that they themselves might have made gain an enhanced air of respectability when the pronouncements come from persons affiliated with universities and think tanks with intellectual brand names.
How often ethicists are retained for reasons other...