Journal of Medical Ethics

Public-advocacy-focused secular bioethics is largely progressive politics covered with a veneer of expertise. While there are certainly university courses and degrees in the field, no bioethicist is licensed as such. Indeed, the entire discourse is purely subjective. It is driven mostly by philosophers, professors, doctors, and lawyers who opine about a particular set of issues, your faithful correspondent included.

But now, members of the tribe apparently want to pretend that secular bioethics has become such a deeply ingrained part of our societal bedrock that it qualifies as a moral tradition. From, “Bioethics as an Emerging Moral Tradition and Some Implications for Adversarial Cooperation,” published in the influential Journal of Medical Ethics (citations omitted):

In a forthcoming book titled The Emerging Tradition of Secular Bioethics,…we focus on whether the field of bioethics in the pluralistic and increasingly polarised American context can give justified moral guidance in foundational, clinical, research and public health domains. We argue against a proceduralistic account of bioethics that limits the field to analysing moral problems and clarifying key concepts but never offering substantive moral guidance. We also reject an Enlightenment account of bioethics based on universal, neutral and abstract rational standards and moral first principles that are undeniable by any reasonable person and that can (in theory) eliminate all fundamental moral disagreements. Rather, we argue that while once naming a discourse through which various historically embedded moral traditions could discuss ethical challenges, bioethics is now an emerging content-full moral tradition in its own right.

Notice that the entire premise excludes the moral influence of religion — which is a much deeper tradition with a far longer history — even though one of the founding fathers of bioethics was the great Christian theologian Paul Ramsey. Moreover, some of the most vibrant minds arguing against contemporary mainstream views — such as the astute Catholic bioethicist Charles Camosy (among many others) — would seem, by definition, to be excluded from the supposed “moral tradition” because their principles are profoundly influenced by faith. (For those who would applaud, please recall that eugenics was a progressive secular policy resisted most vociferously by the Catholic Church.)

In an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics — one of the field’s most influential publications — an independent researcher argues that transgender people should be granted access to AI-generated “digital twins” to allow them to “design” themselves before undergoing transition interventions. From “Designing Inclusive Digital Twins: Ethical and Practical Considerations for Trans Healthcare”: DTs combine AI, big data analytics and sensor technology to create dynamic, patient-specific models that enhance diagnosis, prognosis and treatment planning. For trans individuals, DTs could transform gender-affirming care by offering precise simulations of HRT effects, such as changes in body composition or emotional well-being, or visualising surgical outcomes tailored to individual goals. This means a lot of reprogramming of AI software: Current datasets often Read More ›

The mainstream bioethics movement aims to destroy human exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian morality as the philosophical foundations of society. Toward that end, the academic discourse repeatedly revels in the transgressive as bioethicists take to the most influential journals to advocate destroying “natural limits” and maximizing concepts of personal autonomy that are destructive of social cohesion. Latest example: An article published in Oxford’s Journal of Medical Ethics argues in favor of biotechnologically altering ova to permit lesbians to engage in same-sex biological reproduction. Bioethicist Adrian Villalba writes in “Queering the Genome“: The potential alteration of genomic imprinting opens the door for an oocyte [egg] to exhibit characteristics similar to a sperm, allowing it to fertilise another egg. This can be achieved by Read More ›

Bioethics is a utilitarianish social-political movement whose primary advocates are usually philosophers, lawyers, and/or doctors. Mainstream bioethicists (unless they have a modifier in front of the identifier, such as “Catholic”) generally push against human exceptionalism — a concept many view as “speciesism” — and promote Tower of Babel–like experiments that push us toward an almost-anything-goes research ethic. Bioethical issues are generally debated beyond the public’s perception, in professional journals, before they are introduced in public policy. The Journal of Medical Ethics, published out of Oxford, is one of the movement’s most influential publications. A major new article therein discusses the ethical implications of scientists’ implanting human-brain “organoids” — functional brain tissue created with stem cells — into animals, which could enhance Read More ›