Washingtonian Irrelevance
Well, the President's Council on Bioethics is going to be back at it again this week.
Staying on their breakneck pace of "one month on, two months off" for meetings, the PCB will convene on Thursday and Friday in Arlington, VA, a well-known hot spot for democratic deliberation, to discuss the novel topics of health care reform....conscience in health professions....and medical futility! (Thanks to Medical Futility for the full announcement.)
When we've had commissions for decades, why would these heady bioethicists think that this group would be any more likely to make progress on, of all things, health care reform? And medical futility? Could there be a topic MORE discussed in the bioethics literature?
Now, maybe the Pellegrino gang have something to say with the conscience and the medical profession topic--but we've yet to see a report of any real relevance come out of this Council, so I won't be holding my breath. I'd probably learn more in Arlington if I went to the Newseum.
No one really cares about commissions anyway--especially not this one. But please, isn't it time someone stood up, again, and pointed out how ridiculous this all is? The churning of reports, scheduled all the way until mid-2009, that no one reads but worst of all on topics that are totally irrelevant is no way for government bioethics to function.
So will someone, anyone, from the Council explain to the taxpayers who make this activity possible, what are we really paying for? Books of essays? Chatter about the same old topics or ones about which there can be no real progress?
I'm ready for debate. I want the Pellegrino Council to take strong positions and to let those who oppose them stake their ground, too. But let's make the dialogue purposeful, timely, and relevant--to somebody.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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The childishness of this post is appalling, and shows that no matter how many years go by, this blog continues to be one of the least civil and well-thought-out in all of American Philosophy, which is saying quite a lot, since American Philosophy is less well-thought-out and civil now than at any time before in our history.
First, any and every Executive Branch Bioethics Committee, under any and every President (Obama, McCain in the future, Bill Clinton in the past) will have great trouble meeting more than once every couple or three months, because of how far away people are drawn, considering the fact that the President will nominate them from around the globe (indeed, there is no reason such members even need to be American citizens and living in the U.S., and we might see in upcoming years appointments come from places like Israel, Australia, the U.K. and farther than that). As for their having the meeting at a hotel in Arlington, rather than near 16th street by the White House, I don't see what having the meeting a few stops down the Orange line of the Metro does to anyone.
Second, no one on this commission ever said that they would "make progress on" the law of "health care reform" before they cease being the Council at the end of Bush's 2nd term-indeed, if people with Ph.D.'s in Philosophy and related fields were all fired for not having ideas that legislatures and executives cared to follow and/or enact, in part or in whole, then nearly every Ph.D. in Academic Philosophy in the world would be out of work and they would be out of work this instant.
Somehow I truly doubt that you would be sneering at these professors on the Council for their irrelevance if they were people who tended to agree with the politico-ethical answers *you* tend to give on this blog, Ms. Johnson. But they don't, they are right-wingers (compared to you and most bioethicists, certainly), and so you can make sophomoric insults against them all you want, so says the current terrible ethics of this blog's, er, "civility."
Third, this post drips with the typical ad hominem you constantly display on this blog. So, where exactly in this post do you prove that the current commission's answers have all been wrong over these past years? Where is there a necessary link between being not cited often amongst America's very leftist Bioethicists and actually being *wrong* in one's precriptions? Do you even allude to evidence for this very controversial allegation? Nope. You and your colleagues in a very small slice of the already small slice of Academia that is Philosophy already believe it...so it must be so.
Here's a newsflash: calling Wesley Smith "Mr. Egg Man" and snarking at Edmund Pellegrino is what most Americans expect a late night comic, or kids in a Kindergarten playground, to do. You evidently have a Ph.D. in Ethics, but the times are legion on this site when you don't act like it at all. I've been probably the harshest critic this blog has ever had amongst those who read it/follow it regularly. Every single time a post like this is put up, it proves everything I've said in the past about Bioethicists' rampant politicization, use of ad hominem arguments, lack of attention to detail, and just general rudeness.
- by Bradford Short on Sep 8, 2008 at 9:17 PM | link
Hi Summer,
with respect, I thought that Bioethics and Human Dignity was terrific. I think that this is a topic which is dismissed by most AJOB bioethicists in far too cavalier a fashion. The quality of the analysis in many of the essays was top-notch. As well, you must remember that this is a government commission and is addressing blockheads like me, the public, in other words, not bioethicists whose antennae quiver at the slightest novelty. I shall miss them.
- by Michael Cook on Sep 9, 2008 at 8:12 AM | link
topics that are totally irrelevant: health care reform....conscience in health professions....and medical futility
There may well be persuasive reasons to expect that the PCB will not say anything new, or even particularly interesting, on any of these topics. So perhaps the PCB is irrelevant, buth these topics? Hardly...
So, you're ready for debate? I'll wager that if you stake out a clear position on any of these topics, debate will ensue.
- by bob koepp on Sep 9, 2008 at 10:23 AM | link
Summer, why the attitude?
There's been a lively debate on the conscience issue at Secretary Leavitt's blog
http://secretarysblog.hhs.gov/my_weblog/2008/08/physician-con-1.html
- by Beverly Nuckols on Sep 9, 2008 at 4:39 PM | link