Alright, the headline is a tad hyperbolic. But just a tad.

Bioethics has always been about granting “experts” in the field tremendous influence over public policy. And now, one of the most prominent practitioners in the field — the president and CEO of the Hastings Center Report, a prestigious bioethics journal — has urged that bioethicists expand their “expert” advocacy to issues of “global” importance.

Note the usual progressive gobbledygook lexicon. From “A Path Forward — and Outward,” by Vardit Ravitsky:

Bioethics should move beyond a focus on human health and set the more ambitious goal of exploring conditions for human flourishing even beyond the WHO’s famously broad definition of health as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Attention to factors such as race, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and disability are crucial for understanding and overcoming the systems of oppression that stand int he way of flourishing of all. This more ambitious bioethics should be about removing barriers to flourishing and building societies that promote it.

Putting those two approaches together means allowing bioethics to become a prime influence over just about everything involving the human condition, doesn’t it? As I have suggested before, health and wellness are becoming the pretext for establishing a woke technocracy, i.e., rule by so-called “experts.”

Judge for Yourself

More:

Some of the issues that plague our societies, such as gun violence, domestic violence, homelessness, or threats to democracy, may not be directly related to biomedicine. Others, such as poverty, racism, war, global warming, or misinformation are indirectly related to the provision of health care. But all of these challenges definitely constrain the ability of individuals, communities, and nations to thrive, to enjoy the right to health, and to “share in scientific advancement and its benefits,” as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights envisioned.

Know this. The bioethics movement at the macro level — as opposed to working through difficult patient treatment decisions in hospitals, and the like — is pure progressive politics. Unless the term “bioethicist” is preceded by a modifier such as “Catholic” or “pro-life,” you can bet that the practitioner will hold the following views.

• Abortion rights: For
• Assisted suicide: For (except Ezekiel Emanuel)
• Health-care rationing based on quality of life: For
• Second Amendment rights: Against
• Vaccine mandates during Covid: Strongly for
• Censoring unpopular views, i.e., “disinformation”: For
• “Gender-affirming care” for minors: For
• Medical conscience, i.e., protecting MDs from being forced to provide services of which they are morally or religiously opposed: Against
• “Anti-racism,” “equity,” and DEI: For
• Research on embryonic stem cells and human cloning: For
• Allowing Catholic hospitals to operate under Catholic moral dogma: Against
• Carbon taxes: For
• Believing that being a “person” (which may include some animals and exclude some people) matters morally rather than being human: For

Well, You Get the Idea

Some bioethicists are now taking Ravitsky up on her call for bioethicists to expand their advocacy to broader world controversies, such as this “demand” published in Impact Ethics, a bioethics blog, for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza.

But why should society heed the political and ideological opinions of bioethicists? They aren’t professionally licensed, after all. Barbers are licensed. They certainly don’t have a monopoly on wisdom, and indeed, the field is entirely subjective. Bioethics is a means (he said snarkily) for philosophy majors to make a living. Most of the prominent practitioners are philosophers, MDs, university professors, or lawyers.

So, Wesley, are you saying bioethics is a monolith? No. But the mainstream has hardened into something of an orthodoxy in which the primary differences among those contributing to the bioethical sacred discourse agree on fundamental moral and policy principles but quibble over some details — sort of like Catholics arguing with Anglicans.

It seems to me that the best approach to the policy opinions of mainstream bioethicists is to consider the source, shrug, and carry on. Their opinions are no more — or less — important than yours and mine.

Cross-posted at National Review.