Progressives Discover Bioethics

The Center for American Progress sponsored the event Progress in Bioethics to promote a stronger relationship between scientific innovation and politics on the grounds that bio-politics is the next frontier. The event’s tagline revealed an ulterior competitive motive, perhaps, which set the tone for the panel discussion: “After more than a decade of conservatives’ dominance of public bioethical debate, progressive bioethics is finally in ascendance.”

Editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Michael Tomasky began by pointing out that “Conservatives don’t do nuance” [when it comes to ethical issues]. That there is hardly any attention paid right now to ethics and bioethics in particular is not the point; what is key for Tomasky is that when talk of bioethics resurfaces, while Conservatives have their position neatly and ardently memorized, the Left will still be figuring out theirs.

Tomasky’s colleague and Managing Editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Clay Risen emphatically pointed out that the Right has had time to really think about these issues, but that the speed with which technology creates new (bio)ethical situations no longer allows for philosophizing.

Founder and Board President of Women’s Bioethics Project, Kathryn Hinsch worries that Conservatives will beat out their opponents at “framing the debate, defining the vocabulary, and forging the ideas” for bioethics because they are steadfast and explicit in their view.

Natalia Angulo is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia and a recent University of Dallas graduate.