Who Thought This One Up?

How to pay for stem cell research. Hmm. I know. Tax nose jobs.

Perfect People: the Grudge Match

Perfect people: is it a good aim? Art Caplan and Carl Elliott debate in Public Library of Science. It is fun to read but the argument is pretty much what you expect. Caplan discharges the debate as somewhat silly:

Beating up on the pursuit of perfection is silly. As Salvadore Dali famously pointed out, “Have no fear of perfection—you'll never reach it.” Critics of those who allegedly seek to perfect human beings know this. While often couching their critiques in language that assails the pursuit of perfection, what they really are attacking is the far more oft-expressed—albeit far less lofty—desire to improve or enhance a particular behavior or trait by the application of emerging biomedical knowledge in genetics, neuroscience, pharmacology, and physiology.

And Elliott responds that it isn't a conservative defense of human nature that motivates him, rather he is concerned about misplaced energies devoted to enhancement instead of more important aims; in particular Elliott is as always primarily fighting against big pharma's promotion of enhancement:

Caplan does not defend medical enhancement so much as attack its critics. Or rather, he attacks a small group of conservative critics who want to preserve “human nature.” He dispatches those critics with admirable precision, but I am not sure why he believes that group of critics includes me. My worry about enhancement technologies has little to do with human nature. My worry is that we will ignore important human needs at the expense of frivolous human desires; that dominant social norms will crowd out those of the minority; that the self-improvement agenda will be set not by individuals, but by powerful corporate interests; and that in the pursuit of betterment, we will actually make ourselves worse off.

Still, it is a fun read. And maybe it will get a few more copies of Better than Well and The Perfect Baby into circulation. Come to think of it, maybe we could stage a series of these wrestling matches ... yeah ... that's the ticket ...

Happy Birthday to Us

We're two months old today. Thanks to more than 24,000 visitors who've read 146 posts. Thanks to guest bloggers Art Caplan and Dominic Sisti. Thanks to John Kwon for building the link to AJOB's news function, and to more than a dozen reporters who offered great advice, especially our friends at Wall Street Journal. Thanks to more than a dozen blogs who've linked to us, and to the readers who nominated us for seven different Best of the Blogs, EDUblog, and Best Medical Blog awards. And thanks to a couple of dozen moms, high school teachers and casual surfers who've written comments, including really nice cheerleading comments, so far. Thanks to those who have pilfered this stuff for the bioethics listservs and for newspaper and newsletter stories. I said we'd try this experiment for 60 days, the idea of a journal's editors doing a blog is pretty odd after all. I'm ready to say that if not yet successful this is at least worth extending for another four months. After that we'll see. For now look for more guests and an 'alert network' that will feed us (and you) news. And there is a pretty good chance we'll be acquired by a prominent blogging company with whom we're in negotiations, if I can only get them to agree to pay for my kids' college education, or at least more than a cup of coffee. Oh yeah and speaking of that, your clicks on sponsor ads have raised almost $6 for our non-profit bioethics education group, which will go a long way toward buying coffee for a couple of students at ASBH! - GM