The blind pursuit of modern science can result in a dangerous fixation upon the human ideal, Leon Kass of the President's Council on Bioethics warned Monday in the first of three lectures titled "Keeping life human: Biology and human dignity."
"For the most part, we should be mightily glad" that we live at the beginning of a golden age, Kass told a packed audience yesterday afternoon, citing the power of today's medicines to yield healthier and longer lives. But "in the end, the good that we can do with science and medicine can only come from not seeing ... medicine as the messiah."
A professor on social thought at the University of Chicago and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Kass is lecturing this week as the Charles E. Test, M.D., Distinguished Visiting Scholar.
Monday's lecture, "A more perfect human: The promise and peril of modern science," focused on the dangers of seeking human perfection through genetic engineering and prenatal genetic screening for defects and disease.
Kass indicated the importance of considering whether "any connection exists between the glass man and the night of broken glass." He was referring to a "perfect" plastic model man that was displayed in Nazi Germany and used as an ideal for their racial policies, and to Kristallnacht, the night when Jewish homes and businesses were vandalized in November 1938.
A frequent theme in Kass' talk was that of the progression from a quest for scientific progress and "full human flourishing" to a hatred of imperfection and outright persecution of those who don't meet eugenic requirements, as was the case in Nazi Germany.
Kass warned that the presence of a liberal government in the United States was not a guarantee against similar dangers here.
He cited the Netherlands, a liberal democratic society, where euthanasia is legal, worrying that ideas that have been viewed as "barbaric" since 1945 are being brought back today.
Kass made specific mention of Peter Singer, a noted professor of bioethics at Princeton, who has argued that euthanasia is morally appropriate in certain circumstances, as an example of a shift in values in modern society.
Singer, who was seated in the audience, did not speak during the question-and-answer session following the lecture.
"I think we are right to be concerned about [pursuing] these venerable goals through these magical means," Kass continued. "Will our enhanced activities really be better? And be better humanly?"
"When we look at the glass man's face, hoping to find evidence of the human soul within, what stares back at us ... is only the skull — universally the symbol of death."
The remaining two lectures, presented by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions are "The dignity of human being: 'Death with dignity' and the 'sanctity of life,'" on Tuesday and "The dignity of human flourishing: Biotechnology and the pursuit of happiness," on Wednesday, both at 4:30 p.m. in the Computer Science Building, Room 104.
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