Human Dignity and Bioethics

Human Dignity and Respect for Persons | 31
by these events and forces were apparent but nascent in American
society. The process of developing and exploiting the potential of
biomedicine and biotechnology had been well underway for years,
but the effort to reckon with the full (and still uncertain) implications
of this potential was in its infancy, as was the field of bioethics
itself. The issues that, by Congressional mandate, dominated the
agenda of the National Commission were ones that could reasonably
command public support and concern: what ethical precepts
should guide clinical research, permitting it to go forward on a more
secure moral footing? And in justifying its response to this question,
in advocating the practical application of the Belmont principles,
the National Commission could appeal to beliefs and perceptions
that derive their normative authority from widespread acceptance in
American society and—especially in the case of the principle of respect
for persons, with its focus on autonomy—from deep roots in
the American political tradition.
Thirty years later, it would be an understatement to say that much
has changed, although many features of the present era were discernible
in germinal form at the time of the National Commission. The
ideological tensions that led to and were further aggravated by Roe v.
Wade have evolved into the stark polarities of today’s so-called culture
wars, thereby frustrating if not precluding any facile appeal to a common,
shared morality. Meanwhile, a steady stream of discoveries in
biomedicine and novel applications of biotechnology have extended
and strengthened our reach over human biology, equipping us with
new tools, not only for curing and ameliorating human disease but
also for enhancing certain traits and capacities, for conceiving and
gestating human life, and for forestalling the fate that awaits us all,
death itself. Today, more than ever before, we seem poised for mastery
over many aspects of human life, including those that unite us
with nonhuman animals and those that separate us from them. For
some, these achievements of the ongoing revolution in biomedicine
and biotechnology testify to the triumph of human ingenuity and
to the efficacy of the human will to fashion our environment—and
ourselves—as we wish. For others, the claim that all these impressive
achievements make positive contributions to human flourishing
is misguided and even dangerous, neglecting the sober lesson of
Tuskegee: that the quest for new knowledge, and for new applications