Hard choices | |
Bioethics: an anthology. Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer (editors). Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1999 (600 pp). ISBN: 0 631 20311 7. |
Helga Kuhse and
Peter Singer, perhaps Australia's best known bioethicists, have put together an anthology which is a must for any serious scholar of bioethics. It contains some of the more important essays in international bioethics literature of the last 20 years. Conveniently grouped together under 11 main headings, they cover most of the contemporary debates on bioethical issues. Understandably, a large part of the book (160 pages) is given over to essays on such end-of-life issues as euthanasia, letting die, severely disabled newborns, brain death, and the distinction between killing and letting die. Two essays of particular importance in this section are those by Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle, and James Rachels (moral philosophers who have contributed to the development of natural law theory). The contributions to bioethical debate from these American moral philosophers are from very different philosophical positions, and reach very different conclusions. These essays articulate well the huge divide between contemporary bioethicists, a divide which is reflected in wider social and moral opinion. On the matter of balance, the editors can be rightly criticised. Disproportionate space is provided to those scholars who broadly support the positions with which Kuhse and Singer have become identified. These positions include strong support for a pro-choice position on abortion and euthanasia, as well as support for the euthanasia of defective newborns. The intentions of the editors are given away in the introduction, in which they give an appraisal of various moral theories. Natural law theories (based on that body of true propositions about what ought to be done, arrived at by reason, and derived from a set of first principles) are dismissed after brief and superficial consideration. This bias is then evident in the 18 pages given to an anti-abortion position as against 33 pages supporting the pro-abortion position, and to the 27 pages given in support of euthanasia, with a mere eight pages opposed. This bias makes it a less useful book than it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the editors succeed in offering us a very useful compendium of some of the more interesting and penetrating articles in contemporary bioethical literature. John I Fleming
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