MARGARET SOMERVILLE AND THE PERILS OF BIOETHICS.(The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human Spirit)(Review)

IN AN OBVIOUS SENSE, deep thinking is required to tackle ethical issues related to the use of biomedical technology. This is clear enough whether the issues are familiar, such as the rights and wrongs of abortion and euthanasia, or those of more recent notoriety, related to new or merely postulated technologies that require the manipulation of genetic material. Of course, the newer issues are complex in additional ways: technologies such as cloning for reproductive or therapeutic purposes are often poorly understood; they are difficult and strange in their underlying theory, in their actual or imagined operation and effects, and in their possible consequences.

All of these issues, old and new, demand careful, open-minded thought. They need to be considered patiently, analytically--"in-depth".

Moreover, arguments in the field of bioethics may ultimately compel us to identify and examine our own deeply-held intuitions, as commonly happens in other areas of philosophy. Philosophers typically ask questions that cannot be answered by deduction from self-evident premises, or from premises that are open to practical verification or experimental tests. When dealing with normative ethical issues, philosophers frequently dig down through the strata of argument and counter-argument to uncover premises that are not susceptible of any further support but simply appear plausible as moral intuitions, reflecting individuals' fundamental principles or commitments. Then the question is whether these intuitions remain so attractive after their meanings and implications are scrutinised in detail and an attempt is made to fit them into the general matrix of human experience.

In these senses, it is the job of philosophers, particularly ethical philosophers and certainly including bioethicists, to think deeply about the issues they confront, and to look for intuitions that are deeply, strongly, and perhaps widely, held. Philosophical analysis is a form of rational enquiry, but it deals with questions that are not open to precise mathematical and empirical investigation, either not yet or not ever. Because of their subject matter, there is a sense in which philosophical arguments cannot be demonstratively compelling all the way down. With questions of ethics or metaphysics, there is always the prospect that equally rational opponents may end up identifying disagreement at a very deep, essentially intuitive level.

While this may be an unpalatable recognition, it is very different from the claim that philosophical questions can be settled by drawing upon a wellspring of "deep", non-rational knowledge that is available when the processes of rational analysis and argument run to their end. Philosophers who speak of "deep" or "profound" truths in this latter sense may sound wise or noble, but they deserve our suspicion, not our open-mouthed admiration.

Bioethical issues provoke more than their share of faux "deep" thinking, and Margaret Somerville's recent treatise, The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human Spirit (Viking/Penguin, 2000, $28), is a case in point. At least when Somerville is writing about philosophical issues, rather than more narrowly legal ones, she gives the impression that an incessant repetition of the words deep, profound and their cognates is intended to lend her own analysis an air of profundity.

For example, she wants us to "pass on to future generations a value of profound respect for the transmission of human life". She has qualms about abortion because it conflicts with her view that "the passing of human life to the next generation deserves the deepest respect". When she considers the mandatory destruction of embryos stored in liquid nitrogen, she declares: "There is something grossly wrong with our moral intuitions if a law that mandates mass extermination of any form of human life does not raise the most profound ethical concerns." She refers elsewhere to "the profound sense of respect and responsibility that we should feel for the immense powers the new science and technologies have placed in our hands".