The following is a converstation which took place in 2004, between Dr. T. D. Singh, Founding Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, and Prof. Arthur L. Caplan, Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.
BIOETHICS, SCIENCE OF LIFE AND SPIRITUALITY
(This article was originally published in the Journal Savijnanam Vol. 9, 2017. It has been edited for clarity.)
T. D. Singh (Henceforth TDS): (Showing the Savijnanam journal; Volume 1&2) This is our last publication; we are organizing our conference in Rome, about life’s origin.[1]
Arthur L. Caplan (Henceforth ALC): Great! You know , we are about to put together a collection of readings on “when this life began”. We have been working on this book for hours. This is very interesting to me. Ah, and this is your journal.
TDS: Yes, I am the editor. In this volume, there is an interview with Professor Arber.[2] You might know him.
ALC: Yes, I know who he is, although I did not meet him personally. And here, Prof. Pribram,[3] I actually know him.
TDS: And this is another friend, Prof. Townes, from Berkeley. And here is George Wald, he was my guest during the International Conference on the Synthesis of Science and Religion which we organized in Calcutta.[4] I have been active in this field for more than thirty years. And now, we are also working with the Metanexus Institute.[5] Many people are conducting wonderful projects nowadays, to help bridge science with spirituality or philosophy, and allow for more ethics in science.
ALC: Yes. I know many of those scientists. You know, I actually got my training in philosophy, but I did degrees in genetics. So I spent some time doing population genetics[6] among other studies, and I got a double degree from Columbia. That’s my background. Some of these science guys I know from my old days (laughs), from the ancient times!
TDS: I am happy that we are both working in the same stream. We are very interested in bioethics.
ALC: Where are you based exactly now?
TDS: I have an office here in Denver, but I am based in India. My headquarters is in Kolkata. Have you been to Kolkata?
ALC: I am ashamed to say that I have never been to India. I have been invited there a couple of times, but I found it next to impossible to be free long enough to go. So unfortunately, I have never gone to China, never gone to India.
TDS: I saw in your biography that you’ve been involved in many organizations and committees.
ALC: Oh, yes! For example, last year, I chaired the United Nations panel on cloning. For three years I was very much involved. Once you get into one of those committees, it’s hard to get out of it! (laughs)
TDS: I recently published something on bio-ethics, biomedical ethics.[7] And when I was in the Vatican, I showed this to the head of their biotech group. Also I had little discussion on this topic.
ALC: It is not easy. I disagree completely with some of the issues they are teaching under the Pope’s name, like tube-feeding.[8] I am on good terms of having a debate. It is funny, I am not a Catholic and I am trying to appeal to all the catholic groups, to tell them “I am not sure if you are right by telling that others don’t have their own religious tradition right”. From outside, it is not the best place to start, but what can I do? (laughs)
TDS: I think discussions are always positive. It seems they are opening up slowly to other traditions and other views.
ALC: Yes, slowly, it is true, and I felt success in talking to them on several issues, not so much on cloning, which they are just opposed to, but we had good conversations on topics like organ donation, sale of organs. That issue has just come up in India a lot. They have been doing a good work about that issue on kidney. There is a lot of value in the Church perspective.
On the question of tubes, I think their problem is that they see tube-feeding technology used in health care as similar to what you do when you just eat a meal. I keep saying this is not eating a meal. When we put a tube in you, it’s high technology, it’s not comfortable, and no one would ever want to eat that way. Oh no, you wouldn’t choose it! It is called feeding, but it is not feeding. It is artificial nutrition provision. It is artificial, as a respirator or other technologies that are around.
You know, there is another friend of mine, a very good and well-respected young surgeon in Harvard, and very involved in bioethics. He was born in the USA, but his family is from India. You may know him, Atul Gawande; he wrote notorious books.[9] For example, he studied and compared surgical practices in different cities of India with what they do in Boston. Though the resources are not the same at all, the outcomes are not that different. He is very interesting to talk to on a number of issues. I think he will become a leader in bioethics.
TDS: Fine. And what about you? I understand that your fields were primarily history and philosophy. How did you come to bioethics?
ALC: Well, this is a long story (laughs). When I was heading for my philosophy of science degree, I was a student of a famous mathematician; in fact I was his last graduate student. He said, “You know, the areas of science that are not understood well are the differences between applied science – engineering, medicine, agriculture – and theoretical science. A useful topic would be if you could explore somewhat what makes an applied science a different science.”
So, I started looking at medicine to see what was its relationship to biology. For example, is it just applied biology, or there are separate theories and views within medicine? To put it in another way, does the need to study the whole organism in a holistic sense makes it different from the reductionistic approach that a biochemist might see in genetics?
And from there I got interested in other value questions. People would say, “Look, when we are doing medicine, what makes it different from biology is that we constantly have to deal with values.” Then I would say, what are those values, what does it mean? They would answer, “Well, you know, in trying to pursue health or to decide what should be the best cure we have to make a value judgment that you don’t make when you are just doing physical science.”
I would say that this is not true; we make value judgments in the physical sciences too! For example, we evaluate whether this measurement is accurate enough, or do we have enough evidence to support this?
I knew that. But there was something different, and that was the concern for the value side of the field of medicine that made me interested in some other ethical debates.
And one event also helped, I have to confess. During this time, someone came to me from the medical school and said, “We hear that you have a background in genetics, you know something about science, and you are studying philosophy. We need someone to teach a course in medical ethics. We don’t even know what it is. But people are talking about it, we hear about this. Would you come and teach this course?”
I was just a graduate student! So I asked, “Will you pay me?” (laughs). They replied they would. Sure, it was more attractive than my career job. So I accepted, and I tried to teach a course. I had one hundred and forty medical students, and at the end of the course, only six of them were left. My course was terrible, a real disaster; they hated it, because all I did was teach a history of philosophy course to them, starting with Socrates, Plato, and finishing with Mill and American philosophers. They didn’t care. It didn’t relate to anything they were interested in, so they hated the course. I went back to the medical school dean, and I said, “I will give you back the money. The course was terrible.” I had to say it in an ethical way! He laughed at me and replied, “Don’t give back the money, but we know the course was terrible (laughs). The problem is that you don’t have examples from medical science.” This was true; I didn’t know anything about it.
To cut the long story short- I spent three years at Columbia medical school, and I became very much interested in the bedside issues. Then I fixed the course. So you see, I took a detour from the philosophy side to the values side and the medical school. It’s a funny story.
TDS: That was remarkable! It seems to me that ethics, in the western perspective, deals with what is right or wrong, what is good or bad in human actions. In India, we generally refer to the spiritual perspective; we accept values in accordance with the religious teachings. The idea is that unless we have a very clear conception about what life is, in particular what human life is, we cannot have a clear understanding of ethics, bioethics, or global ethics. I find this is interesting. Would you like to give your comment or opinion?
ALC: This is a very interesting question. It turns out that if you are talking to some of the few bio-ethicists, they would answer this with a yes. I think some of my colleagues in America particularly, but somewhat in Europe too, might say, well, no, I have a theory of what is good and bad, and that determines how I see things. I am a consequentjalist,[10] or I believe in principles, or I am a virtue ethicist, or I have a Catholic view, or a Jewish view, or whatever it could be.
I happen to believe two things. The first is that medicine is unique in that it has the values of health and disease, whether in India, in Costa-Rica, or in the United States. If one piece of your hand is over here and the rest of your arm is over there, everybody disvalues this. I mean, it is not considered a good thing ever by anybody. So medicine can be a bit more universal, because it has this notion of health and disease. But to understand what health and disease are, requires an understanding of what is life. So, to start to talk about what is good, you do need to know that safer nature for human beings. I would ask, in an Aristotelian sense of the old western philosophy tradition, what does it mean for something to meet its goal or purpose? So you do have to explore notions exactly like this. I think that in one sense, biology tells us a bit about how we define the goals of medicine.
What is your meaning of human health about? If I say someone has high blood pressure, if I say someone is diabetic, I am using standard terms, not a theory. I am using it because it’s an explanation of what normal function is, and that’s built on an idea of what life is. If someone dies of some disease at 10 years of age, that seems unnatural, or wrong, because our understanding of what they are designed to live is longer than that. If someone lives for 200 years, this is strange and unusual again, because my understanding about the species design doesn’t include this. So I get puzzled about why that would happen. If I want to try and make people live for 200 years, if I pursue that as a goal, I have to ask, what does it mean, is that part of our understanding on what a good life is, why would we want to extend it that way. My answer would be yes. I think it is crucial. In some other areas, you want an answer, because you want to know when life began, why you need to respect life. These are important questions.
TDS: Thanks. To be more precise, my question is also about what we see today around the world, that some molecular biologists are very focused on life as being a product of complex molecular reactions. This is one aspect of what they call the neo-Darwinian theory.[11] The Darwinian concept doesn’t say much about life; it deals only with the evolution of physical species. These two notions are very dear to the biologists and especially the molecular evolutionists, but they deal merely with atoms and molecules, that means, with matter only.
So, these concepts are either called reductionism or materialism, and it seems to me that when we develop our ethics or bioethics or biomedical ethics, we find that there is some kind of incompatibility between these two lines of thoughts.
ALC: I agree. I think there is more than material reductionism in understanding health. This is where I begin to argue with my Darwinian friends; I just had this argument with Richard Dawkins. Some people would say, all that life consists of is genes figuring a way to get into the next generation, and we are just vessels for carrying these genes around. However, it seems notable to me that we have brains, we have culture, we have ways that are non-Darwinian to transmit information. This is a way (moves the hand)! This mechanism doesn’t require going through genes, it actually just exists, in the objective world, television, computer, books, and cultural practices.
We also know that we have will, forgetting, all mental phenomena. I believe that you can explain that mental phenomena someday by materialism; I am a materialist.
But I also believe that an understanding of what makes health has to include aspects of enjoyment, mental functioning, holistic capabilities, that the species has. To be clear, there is more going on in evolution than what the Darwinian evolutionists state; we have jumped faster because we have cultural evolution, if you want to put it that way. That fact means the materialistic explanation of Darwinism is not enough to explain us, and we have to feed that interior understanding of what health is, because we are cultural creatures in addition to being biological creatures. Genes probably are not going to invent nuclear weapons. Genes are not going to have ideological conflicts about what’s the best political system. Cultural creatures do. By the way, this is also why I believe that to understand ethics, you need to understand that it is a social enterprise; it is what goes on between people, it is not just to have a property like a soul or consciousness. That may be necessary but that’s not sufficient. So I do see materialism as an explanatory story, but it is not a full story of what we are now. That’s what I would say. So that has to feed our understanding of what health is.
TDS: I feel that the dialogue between science and spirituality can help in bringing new lights and a real synergy. Science primarily deals with the physical world frame, with physical knowledge; and religious traditions or spiritual wisdom can inspire ethical views by demonstrating what is the deeper concept of life, the meaning of life, and its purpose. Although ethics is not purely spiritual or theological, I think it is quite close to it.
ALC: Yes, it is more or less that side. The other thing you might say is, there are different ways of getting knowledge for the purpose of building ethics. I respect the scientific way of knowing things, in fact l respect it deeply, but sometimes information comes from intuition, or experience, or faith, if you want to put it this way. I would add, faith should be reasonable. I get angry sometimes when in American discussions, people say, you have to teach creational stories from the Christian Bible in the schools as science. To me, that’s a degradation, or a mistake. Your faith doesn’t depend on any empirical test of the story; this account sounds wise, interesting or persuasive to you, but you wouldn’t hold it to an empirical test, to check whether there was flood, or whether God made the world in seven days, or whatever is the belief, from any religious book.
I wouldn’t mix scientific epistemology[12] with spiritual epistemology, if you see what I mean. They are different things. When I get into fight about teaching religion in schools, it is not because I don’t want it taught, in fact I don’t mind at all, it even makes me happy that people learn about religion, but I don’t want it to be taught as science. If Indian religious tradition is taught in high schools and colleges in India, it’s very good, but we don’t want to confuse religious knowledge and what makes it persuasive with scientific verification.
To put this in another way, since I am an American, I want to be somewhat practical about what makes something useful in ethics to me. I will just see at the end of the day if it brings about some good; that may not be a scientific way, but it is a test, a practical investigation to gather information and understand if the principle is good or not. If I go to people and they say, “I feel better”, “now I am happy”, or “I feel more empowered”, then I will think, “well, that worked”. And if they say, “I feel miserable”, “I don’t understand things”, “I am frightened”, then it is a bad principle.
So to me, part of spiritual wisdom is: Does it lead to social harmony? Do people feel better than what they were before? Do they feel empowered to do things? That has nothing to do with what a scientist looks at to test something; they don’t care about these questions. But if it makes you empowered, that is what is true, and important to me. So I see a very different epistemological statement here.
TDS: At least scientific values are there, I think we cannot deny them. Science is doing tremendous work for humanity. But it is sometimes used in a harmful way; science does not have all the answers.
ALC: Correct. That’s what I mean with “a different epistemology”. There are different things we can know, and I need to know what is important to me. For example, I love finding out, from a scientific point of view, whether a particular rope is strong enough to hold a particular man of weight. This is an essential information for me when I have to cross a river! (laughs)
TDS: In our tradition, in our epistemology, we consider there are two types of knowledge. One is called material or empirical knowledge; in Sanskrit it is named apara vidya. The other one, para vidya, deals with spiritual knowledge, which includes awareness of what life is. I’ve always had the intuitive feeling that science and spirituality are complementary; if both are studied seriously with an open mind, I am convinced that the result of this dialogue can bring tremendous benefit, including to our ethics.
ALC: Yes, there are two complementary traditions in a hinduistic sense; I am sympathetic to that. But you know, in the Western world, the situation is not simple. Christianity came first , and the material science was seen as a threat to the religious tradition. The way science evolved in the West was as a counter weight or as an opponent of the religion. So they are always seen to some extent as colliding.
I see them that way: complementary, just like you do. I am sympathetic to that point of view because they are just addressing the different ways of knowing different dimensions. But it is hard in the Western world. Science came and said, “that’s all stupid, we don’t believe it”. They viewed the Renaissance as a rebellion against their religious tradition. We have not yet figured out how to accommodate science and spirituality together. I don’t know what the Muslim tradition says about it. In the near history, I think division between the two has also been there.
It is funny that in the West, the scientific materialism is now the dominant “cult.” The mass of spiritual information went out, and the scientific materialism been crushed in.
At certain periods of time, it was the opposite situation, when the West was into its spiritual tradition, and in the 4th, 5th, 6th centuries, and when the Muslim countries were leading the field of science. But it’s gone now. I don’t see its prominence in the other countries, and I guess that in India, it has been more complementary than anywhere else.
TDS: Yes, in India even at the present time the questions, like, when does human life begin are also studied? Is it at the time of conception? These considerations are very interesting; I guess you are also compiling them to produce your book.
ALC: Here is an example of what you are talking about. If I go to my science friends and say, “do you think that science has anything to say about when human life began”, many of them would say, “no, that is a spiritual question or a legal question.” Then I add, “but if I have an embryo and its genetic message is miswritten and can’t develop, isn’t it appropriate to say that this embryo has not enough potential because it is not right alive, but this one over here is?” It may not settle the question about when this life began, but it is a fact that seems to be very relevant. Western science gets very nervous in this area because these are spiritual questions that its method cannot answer. One way things can be complementary is that there are certain facts that would still lead you to support or think about certain spiritual views, and that’s my point. The purpose of presenting this book is ultimately to ponder over this main question of life. If I say, “you know, I don’t think human life begins at the conception”, you may ask why, and I could answer, “well, because many things that are conceived can’t become, they don’t have the potential to become adult forms; there must certainly be some potential there first so that life can begin, and that does not seem to be always the case for embryos, so it’s a problem. ” Now you could still say, “I don’t care, I am going to consider them as alive.” But the facts here are somehow not in support of a particular spiritual value. You can ignore the facts, but they are there anyway, and it seems to me that the role of science here is not to settle the question but to provide some support or challenge to certain types of spiritual views about about when life begins. Does life begin at conception? I would, say yes. But does every life begin at conception? No. When life is in the right environment, it can be actualized. It is pretty clear to me that a definition of life has to be interactive. Nothing indicates that life could be self-sustained; life always needs a supportive environment. All I have seen in biology tells me that if you take anything, a virus for example, and put it in a vacuum, it’s not very alive! So you need to have interactivity, and to me, that has to be a component of defining life.
TDS: Everybody is eager to know what is life, but the perfect definition is not easy to find, and the question is still pending.
ALC: Oh, yes! (laugh) And it is also a funny angle we are taking in this book. We are trying to bring together readings on what people have said on embryology, microbiology, and also physics. We think it is important to ask physicists questions of this type, “What is life for you? How would you know there is life on some other planet, if you get to Mars for example?” That’s the real question, right? How to recognize life? Does it have to say hello, or to be already tabularized, or to replicate — like a crystal would you say? Wow, it could be a life there! It may even be possible to say that there are several definitions; it might be contextual, depending on what purposes you want to use the term life. So, I don’t know, I am not even going to say there is a single answer.
TDS: This reminds me of the small book, “What is life”, that Schrodinger published in 1944. Interesting.
Now, coming to the real practical aspects of bioethics, I am wondering about euthanasia[13] for example; in many cultures, it seems to be not recommended but nowadays, it is accepted in some Western countries. What is your opinion?
ALC: It is legalized in Holland, or in Oregon for example. Well, I have been a critic of a euthanasia. I have not supported this, but it is not because I am against it in every case; what I am against is legalizing it. I think ethically there may be , cases in which helping someone actively to hasten one’s death might be just a fact, but if you make it legal, what I am worried about is, you make it too easy an option, instead of trying to keep somebody alive. 1 just say, “well, it is legal, so goodbye, we are doing euthanasia on you!” (laughs)
If you have euthanasia, and if money is running out, you start to think, “well I am not going to spend money on this patient, he is a poor person, or somebody I don’t like, so he will have euthanasia, good-bye.”
Moreover, it would also lead people to not think hard about what they are doing. Strangely enough, even though Oregon has legal euthanasia; it is not used very much.
We, in Pennsylvania, probably have more cases illegal who may do legal. They are all negotiated. In other words, we say, “This person is paralyzed, he can’t move, his body is collapsed, he cannot stay on living in this way anymore, so we will help him to die, because the course is ultimately to die anyway.” In such a case, I might say OK. If the patient requests narcotics or some other way of dying, if he has a condition like slow advancing Parkinsonism or what we call ALS, the “Lou Ge disease”[14] that causes muscle weakness and body atrophy, I can understand he doesn’t want to live in this way. But if you make it legal, instead of waiting for the patients to say they can no longer tolerate their conditions, some could come along and say, “you are too expensive, you’d better die now very hard to put up with this” and you might do it too soon. So, we don’t want to have people going down on a slippery slope, we don’ t want to have people rushed to choose this, being pressured to do it. You know, most of the time we don’t need it. When people have good support, spiritual support, emotional support, most of them don’t want to use euthanasia. In fact, they just don’t want to be left alone.
TDS: What about Dr. Kervokian?[15]
ALC: Oh, he is terrible.
TDS: Is he still alive?
ALC: Yes, he is in prison in Michigan. I testified against him in court. I have to tell you, just to be honest, that my colleagues in the United States would say, well all right, he is more of a left wing type of person, and they would be surprised that 1 would testify against Kevorkian. What I explained is that he comes as a stranger; he doesn’t know the people who want him to help them die. He doesn’t know anything about them. If you are going to have euthanasia, I’ll tell you the requirement, you have to know your patient. If you come as a stranger, you are an executioner. You have to come to somebody and ask, “Why are you depressed? Why are you sad? What’s wrong?” Kevorkian didn‘t even do that, he would often have them dead within 24 hours of appearing. That’s not proper. I thought of him more as an executioner than as a helper. But I have seen serious doctors sometimes confronted with the situation. I have been present once when someone was helped to die, which I thought was a reasonable end of life, even though I wouldn’t make it legal. l would still keep it as a risk that you might get prosecuted, you could be charged with murder, you’d better be careful with what you are doing.
One other fact, I don’t know the Indian situation, but I will tell you this. In the United States, no Doctor who has been involved in euthanasia (except for Dr. Jock Kevorkian, one or two) has ever been convicted; so in the cases that are brought, juries will say, “Well if it is really like you say, if it is mercy killing, then it is wrong, but we will let you go.” In other words, everybody understands what a real euthanasia case is. Kevorkian was the only person who ever had to go to jail; he wasn’t doing what I am talking about.
TDS: Thanks for sharing your views. I am also interested to discuss with you about cloning, and about abortion.
ALC: Sure. My view on abortion is, it should be legal. But it is something that is over-used in the world, and in the United States particularly. I think there is a case to be made for someone who is raped, for someone who tries to avoid becoming pregnant; if these contraception fails, they should have the right to end the pregnancy they didn’t want. But you shouldn’t be using abortion as birth control, because it is immoral to irresponsibly begin a life and then end it. It is not because 1 think embryos have features of a full person. But they are potential persons, they have value.
So I think I would keep abortion legal, but I would argue that ethically you don’t want to use it. Sometimes, it is used as a form of birth control, in Japan, in Russia for example. I don’t think that’s the right approach to abortion; it should be there as a last resort, when you try to act in a sexually responsible way.
Cloning, you may be surprised, I think that cloning is unlikely to work to make people. If you look at the biology, using old DNA which has all kinds of problems in the genetic composition, putting it in the eggs which have what I will call hatching problem, the chemicals in the eggs are looking for new DNA and finding the old DNA. .. the failure rates on the animals are enormous, because of this problem, and I don‘t really see that we are going to get better at this , it is impaired in biology. No one has cloned a monkey, a primate, and most species have not turned out to be cloneable, so to use cloning to make people, I am not sure it will work. I know that everybody is running around and talking as if it does, or if it’s going to happen, or somebody did it. I don’t believe it. I think that the chances of getting a healthy human being out of cloning are pretty poor. But should this happen, then cloning embryos for research is acceptable to me because they are not potential people, they are just cell clones. So if you could make people by cloning, I would not be opposed, if it could be safe. I actually think it’s like making people by in-vitro fertilization,[16] it’s just another way to make them. If the clones are made that way, and if they move next to you, nothing would happen; people assume they would be monsters or some terrible thing would happen, I don’t believe that’s true. If you want to put it this way, I think clones have souls, they have spirit, and why not make a bumper sticker that says, “Clones are people too, they are just made in a different way.”
But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I actually believe the biology from animals is telling us, this is trouble to do on people! And I think we have a problem worldwide, being afraid of what crooks and nuts and irresponsible people have said about cloning, “I can do it”, or “I am going to do it and you cannot stop me.” Instead you can look at the animal data and see that they are not going to do that soon, they may never do it. And if we start to say the cloned embryos are the same as other embryos, that’s an information that may also be false, in which case the prohibition of using the best source of stem cells for cloning research would not be in tune with or accurate with the biological facts.
TDS: Recently I read some articles and observed the statistics: after undergoing organ transplants, patients say their thinking capabilities are reduced.
ALC: This is probably due to the drugs, the immunosuppressors.[17]
TDS: Just like in cloning, specialists say that even for animals, it is not easy.
ALC: It’s a mess, it’s just a mess! If you have looked at the data recently from our veterinary school, where we do have some pretty good cloning experts, the ratio is still 2% live born animals from cloning. And if the animals are born alive, usually 50% have problems, I mean major problems. The other ones I don’t know, maybe they die early, but it is too soon to tell; it is a pretty unlikely way to make a prediction.
TDS: In this era of advanced high tech, I think bioethics is becoming increasingly necessary; this field is essential.
ALC: Ah! I will tell you two most important things about bioethics. See if you agree, if it can be useful to you. The first one is, the best bioethicist must be proactive, that is ahead of the science, or at least with it. Now I am trying to write about neuroethics[18] concerning new knowledge of the brain, and people say to me “but we don’t have any application yet.” I say, I don’t care. I can see that scanning the brain or trying to improve the performance of the by implants, surgery, or drugs, is coming. I don’t know when it will be fully coming, but it is coming, so it is time to start to talk whether we want to do this or that, or whether it is good or not. The problem with Dolly the cloned sheep was that the ethics all came afterwards; Dolly was here and the ethical discussion came only after, out of fear. The best ethics is ahead of the science, or at least with it, and the bioethicists then have to know enough science to be engaged in reflection.
TDS: They don’t always have it.
ALC: Well, they should have that, they are supposed to have (laughs).The other thing I wanted to say about bioethics is that it allows better’ international communication. It’s funny, you know, when we were talking at the United Nations about cloning, and when I participated in some of the international panels, about genetic testing for example, 1 could experience it. It’s hard for some people sometimes to have cross-cultural talk, and if you ask them about something like what is the best political system, they get into big fights right away. But on topics like cloning, or genetically modified foods, it turns out that it allows for better international discussion! So, one of the reasons I thinkbioethics is becoming most important because it’s a way to ask deep philosophical questions without the interference of the usual baggage. You can really ask about cloning, what is a person, what is an embryo, when does life begin.
If I try to do that for other matters, asking “What’s the best vote system?” or ”What policy should India adopt with respect to building a dam, or some political issue?” Then people would say, “What do you know about it, you are from America, you don’t have any knowledge about the local situation, we don’t care for your views.” Bioethics let you go around that. So, I think it is becoming important because it has got this ability to gather and engage people from different backgrounds on the same issues, maybe because the answers are not yet known, so they can try to figure them out altogether.
I saw this interesting fact about bioethics is valid even in the United States, which may be in some sense a little version of the world, I don’t mean to scare you, it is just to mention that there are so many different cultures and religions in this country. I had a terrible time talking about most things, but bioethics is OK, they all get into it (laughs). It does not lead to fighting with one another. They may not agree, but somehow they manage to discuss these important issues. Other subjects could be contentious, but ethics allows them to engage in real dialogue about deep questions
If I say I want to teach ethics in a high school in America, I am going to have afight, people will say, are you going to teach Persian ethics, or Jewish ethics, or will you tell people that they should be free to do whatever they want?
TDS: Thank you.
ALC: It’s my pleasure, thank you for coming.
Footnotes and References
[1] Bhaktivedanta Institute organized the ‘Second International Congress on Life and its Origin’ in Rome, Italy on 12-14 November, 2004. The conference aimed at examining seriously the deeper insights of life and its origin through the interdisciplinary approach of science and spirituality/theology. There were 37 international speakers. The Vatican Academy under the patronage of the Pope officially participated in this Congress by sending one speaker from the Vatican Academy and fifteen other scholars from the universities run by the Vatican. The talks of eminent speakers are published in the book — Life and its Origin: Exploration from Science and Spiritual Traditions, Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata, 2015.
[2] Werner Arber (1929-): A well-known microbiologist, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1978 for the discovery of the restriction enzyme and their application to problems of molecular genetics. The interview with Prof. Arber, was held on 12th October 2001 at University of Basel, Switzerland. (Refer to T. D. Singh & W, Arber “Dialogue on Life and its Origin”, Savijnanam — Scientific Exploration for a Spiritual Paradigm, Vol.1 Kolkata, 2002, p.12.)
[3] Karl H. Pribram (1919-2015): He is a renowned neuropsychologist and one of the founding fathers of the cognitive revolution in Psychology who advanced a holographic modal of perception and memory called the holonomic brain theory. The interview with Prof. Karl H. Pribram, was held on 8th February 2002 at Kolkata, India. (Refer: T. D Singh & Karl H. Pribram, “Science is Spiritual”, Savijnanam – Scientific Exploration for a Spiritual Paradigm, Vol.1, Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata, 2002, p.31.)
[4] The Second World Congress for the Synthesis of Science and Religion was held in Kolkata from January 9-12, 1997. Prof. Charles Townes, the Nobel Laureate in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A., was the keynote speaker. Some of the key participants included physicist Prof. Gregory Benford, University California, Irvine; Dr. M. M. Damad, Iranian Academy of Sciences; Dr. Joe Kamiya Psychologist and pioneer of biofeedback technology, University of California, San Francisco; Dr. Glenn Bucher, President of Graduate Theological Union, Berkley, Prof. E. C. G. Sudarshan, particle physicist, University of Texas, Austin; Prof. Durwood Foster, Theologist, Pacific School of Religion, Graduate Theological Union Berkeley; Prof. Jonathan Shear, Virginia Commonwealth University and Founding Editor of Journal of Consciousness Studies; Prof. Amit Goswami. Quantum Physicist, Univerisity of Oregon; Prof. Robert Shaw, Psychologist, University of Connection among others. The taIks of eminent speakers are published in the book — Thoughts on the Synthesis of Science and Religion, eds. T. D. Singh and Samaresh Bandyopadhyay, Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata, 2001.
[5] Founded in 1997, the Metanexus Institute, Philadelphia, USA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting scientifically rigorous and philosophically open-ended explorations of very fundamental and foundational questions.
[6] Population genetics is the study of genetic variation within populations, and involves the examination and modelling of changes in the frequencies of genes and alleles in populations over space and time.
[7] Dr. T. D. Singh, Vedanta and Biotechnology -Bioethical Perspectives , Bhaktivedanta Institute Kolkata. 2009.
[8] Tube feeding is also known as Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (PEG). Since their development a quarter century ago at the Rainbow Babies and Children’s, Hospital in Cleveland, USA, PEG tubes have become widely used. Originally designed to provide nourishment to children who were unable to swallow because of neurological problems, PEG tubes are now frequently used in adults who have diseases like head trauma, stroke, collagen vascular disorders and neurological diseases. Other reasons include obstruction caused by head, neck or esophageal cancers. Patients should not be subjected to a PEG unless they are expected to require feeding for more than 30 days. The reason for this is to spare patients with a grave prognosis or limited need for limited need for tube feedings the expense and risk of an unnecessarily invasive procedure.
[9] Some of the books written by Atul Gawande are: Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, Profile Bools, 2002; Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, Profile Books, 2007; The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Profile Books 2009; Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Profile Books, 2014.
[10] Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of ones conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Those who follow this principle are known as consequentialists.
[11] Neo-Darwinism, also called the modern evolutionary synthesis, is the integration of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and Gregor Mendel’s theory of genetics.
[12] Primarily, epistemology is defined as the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with questions such as: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? On the other hand, as the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one’s own mind? Etc.
[13] Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering. The British House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics defines euthanasia as “a deliberate intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, to relieve intractable suffering”. In the Netherlands, euthanasia is understood as “termination of life by a doctor at the request of a patient”. Euthanasia is categorized in different ways, which include voluntary, non- voluntary, or involuntary. Voluntary euthanasia is legal in some countries and U.S. states. Non-voluntary euthanasia is illegal in all countries. Involuntary euthanasia is usually considered murder. Euthanasia is the most active area of research in contemporary bioethics.
[14] Lou Gehrig’s disease is a disorder that’s also called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS. Amyotrophic means that the muscles have lost their nourishment. When this happens, they become smaller and weaker. Lateral means that the disease affects the sides of the spinal cord, where the nerves that nourish the muscles are located; and Sclerosis means that the diseased part of the spinal cord develops hardened or scarred tissue in place of healthy nerves.
[15] Pathologist Jack Kevorkian (May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011), commonly known as ”Dr. Death”, was an American pathologist, euthanasia activist, painter, author, composer and instrumentalist. As a young man, he was very much curious about death and wrote about it academically throughout his life. He is best known for publicly championing a terminal patient’s right to die via physician-assisted suicide. He claimed to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end.
[16] Invitro fertilization lfVF) involves combining eggs arid sperm outside the body in a laboratory. The process involves monitoring and stimulating a womans ovulatory process, removing TI OVuzn oz ova (egg of eggsJ mom the womans ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a liquid in a laboratory. The fertilised egg (zygote) is cultureel fOr 2fi days in a growth medium and is then implanted in the same or another womans uterus, with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy. It is a technique of assisted reproductive technology for treatment of infertility.
[17] Immunosuppressants are drugs or medicines that suppress or reduce the strength of the body’s immune system. They are administered after the transplant to prevent the acute transplant rejection and graft-versus-host disease
[18] Neuroethics studies the social, legal, ethical and policy implications of advances neuroscience.