Are Christians Losing Bioethics
to Corporate Whores and Athiests?
He says Christians don't get much attention in bioethics anymore. It is hard to disagree with the claim he 
Theology and religion both played defining roles in bioethics' origins. "Early" bioethics of the 1970s focused on the "big picture" of environmental and health issues - and there was less focus on esoterica. Theological bioethicists engaged in dialog about big questions like whether or not technology is moving faster than medicine in general, and developed a rich literature about "playing God," to name just two examples. Religious bioethics brought hospital ethics committees into existence. Theologian ethicists and in particular (in the U.S.) scholars of Christian and of Jewish ethics framed bioethics for close to a decade and used it to shape a new and vigorous debate about ethics in society and ethics in technology.
What happened to religious bioethics?
Well, according to Cameron, Caplan happened. Cameron writes:
Arthur Caplan is the quintessential face of contemporary bioethics. Yet he does not in any way represent the American people. How did bioethics get so out of whack with the people? How did it switch from a Hippocratic focus on the sanctity of life to a public relations department for whatever the biotech industry wants to do next? ... [The] central problem, of course, is that we walked out. There is no question that a chief agent of secularization in American culture has been "conservative" Christians.Tough love from Nigel: Caplan is a charming
The problem with Dr. Cameron's argument isn't that he's wrong on the sociology: the best accounts of the changes in bioethics, identified in particular in books by Tina Stevens, Al Jonsen and Jennifer K. Walker, really do show that there was a kind of withdrawal by theology scholars from bioethics, just as bioethics would eventually "move out" in large part from philosophy departments. No question either that bioethics has begun to look "secular" in the sense that most bioethics scholars, like most Americans, do not hold Cameron's view that embryonic stem cell research is murder destroys human life (ed note - revised per Dr. Cameron's comment), that Terri Schiavo should have been kept alive indefinitely, and that human nature is an essential, unchanging thing given by God to be preserved unaltered by human stewards.
But what is really troubling about his argument is that, like Carl Elliot, Cameron claims that secular bioethics is inherently instrumentalist and at the utter disposal of pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology. Like Elliot he presents no substantial evidence of this, and like Elliot his is a claim that turns the goal of Caplan and others of interacting with the public into a sign of (secular) evangelism on behalf of big Pharma.
It is troubling because it is incredibly hypocritical. There is superficial irony in Cameron's clever but incredibly unscholarly bashing "the likes of Caplan" because he and his wannabes aren't "profound Christian thinkers" like Paul Ramsey. Here is Dr. Cameron, after all, writing in some "insiders" website on behalf of "moral seriousness" and careful theology. It's not credible. Nigel Cameron - on behalf of pro-life bioethics scholars in his sway - isn't complaining that the serious theologians have left the bioethics building. He isn't complaining that there isn't enough attention to questions about religion in bioethics. He's complaining that the right-to-life movement doesn't have a Washington think-tank yet, that it doesn't get enough television time, and that it isn't taken seriously because it uses abortion language and gets labeled as the "religious right." If you don't believe me, check out Cameron's web page, which points to his own serious and scholarly engagement with Nightline, Frontline, CNN and the BBC. Nothing wrong with that, obviously, but it does rather put a kink in the whole "naughty secularists chase television" argument.
We do need more energy in theological bioethics. More religion departments hiring Ph.D. trained bioethics scholars with theology backgrounds. More bioethics centers seeking out, hiring and promoting theologians in their midst. More representation of theologians in bioethics societies and panels. But Nigel Cameron is not asking for H. Richard Niebuhr. Real scholars of theology are out there - many have trained a whole generation of smart religionists who write about bioethics - Karen Lebaqz at Pacific School of Religion comes to mind. James Gustafson at Emory. But guess what: many of them aren't conservative. Many of them wouldn't share the view that secularism in bioethics is an evil, or even that it took things "off the religious track." Many of the leading religious bioethicists, for example, took issue with the Catholic establishment of Schiavo, like Prof. John Paris, SJ. I doubt seriously that the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity will be making a hire like John Paris.
When Nigel Cameron says that Christians are losing bioethics, it is a call to arms. He's smart, and he leads a movement that is on the fast track to allying with the neoconservatives (led by Kass) and the purists (led by Elliot). He'll get his think tank - in fact you could argue that Kass' big booster, the American Enterprise Institute, is well on the way to playing that role. And check out the awfully slick and relatively new right wing bioethics website: bioethics dot com, as well as their journal Ethics & Medicine: A Christian Perspective. At some point the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, Trinity International's masters program, the Kass acolytes on the Kass Council, their neocon bioethics journal New Atlantis, and perhaps even the "evil Pharma is buying bioethics" acolytes of Carl Elliot are going to figure out that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. And on that day the pure of soul will take over bioethics in the United States.
But that day won't be a victory for theology. It will be a victory for "old time religion."
- Wannabe [rev 8/13 10:45P]
