Bioethics and the Character of Human Life: Essays and Reflections by Gilbert Meilaender

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Reviewed by: Bioethics and the Character of Human Life: Essays and Reflections by Gilbert Meilaender Mark Mattes Bioethics and the Character of Human Life: Essays and Reflections. By Gilbert Meilaender. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2020. xii + 179 pp. This book gathers fourteen essays written by acclaimed bioethicist Gilbert Meilaender within the last two decades dealing with how to think theologically about life's beginning and ending, and what, in light of stem cell research, it means to be a person. Several essays grow out of his involvement with the President's Council on Bioethics from 2002 until 2009. The book is not too technically demanding for non-ethicists, but a glossary of terms related to stem cell research would have been helpful. Even so, readers seeking ethical wisdom will not be disappointed. This book is important because technology will increasingly open greater possibilities for our genetic futures and life prospects, and it is wise for pastors and teachers to reflect on it. Meilaender cautions us that the degree to which we reduce humans to collections of either genes or organs is the degree to which humans become vulnerable to losing a sense of themselves as integrated, organic wholes (5). Just as important as the ethical ramifications of bioethics is the outlook on human nature that newer biotechnologies evoke. Meilaender is especially sensitive to the fact that humanity is forged between a duality of bodily existence and personhood or, said [End Page 216] differently, finitude and freedom. New technologies facilitate freedom but, for Meilaender, we must never forget our indebtedness to the past, both our biological and genetic histories as well as ethical wisdom. Such received wisdom has helped us face obstacles and challenges through which we define our humanity. All too often, the quest for power over nature, including our own bodies or genetic futures, becomes a way for humans to dehumanize others (10). Meilaender notes that for those who believe that embryos are human beings in their earliest stages of development, the attempt to distinguish "therapeutic" from "reproductive" cloning is undermined; indeed, all cloning is reproductive (23). Embryos deserve our respect since they are "tiny humans" (55). To its credit, the President's Council on Bioethics was able to transcend ethical differences between the political right and left. It acknowledged the fears of the right that biotechnological advances may undermine the natural order while it also addressed the fears of the left that they reduce every human good to a commodity (30). Throughout, Meilaender tackles the differences between religious and secular ethicists. The latter often assume that their views should have pride of place in the public realm. He questions this assumption. For instance, secularists tend to balk at the category of "gift" as laden with religious baggage. Meilaender responds that it is ambiguous whether it is nature, fortune, or God that provides talents that constitute a gift. He worries that the secularist position is willing to embrace genetic enhancements at the risk of dehumanizing us. The stance that endorses greater genetic enhancements for children leads to the illusion that humans can possess a kind of "hyper agency" (43) and establish greater dominance over the world than what we are meant to handle. Paradoxically, techniques of enhancement could actually be alienating, estranging us from ourselves, since they bypass our need to develop ourselves through exercising will power and reflection, qualities which are distinctively human and humanizing (40). In some matters we need to learn to practice contentment (46). For Meilaender, religious assumptions should not be excluded in thinking about whether we should produce multiple embryos so that we can decide which would be worthy to implant, gestate, and [End Page 217] allow to be born (74). Such a scenario gives rise to a "new eugenics," in which not the government but private choices seek to alter human futures (87). With respect to euthanasia, Meilaender notes that we simply cannot do anything we wish with our lives (106). Even so, if people refuse to take insulin once they know that they are dying, they are not choosing death but instead how they will live their last days (127). This book is a model of excellent ethical theorizing in the face of...