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September 1, 2003
A friend of mine gave me some back issues of London Review of Books. This article on bioethics byCarl Elliot caught my eye. You need a subscription to read it. But an interview with Carl Elliot can be found here.
I find this text interesting because bioethics is often heralded as the solution to philosophy's woes in academia: primarily, to avoid being an academic failure. The field of bioethics is one way for modern philosophy to remain philosophy, take the applied ethical turn, intervene into public policy and make some money. Philosophy could actually be something more than teaching and scholarship: it could help to change the world rather than just studying it.
So it is no surprise that bioethic centres have flourished. In Australia bioethics has pretty much meant medical ethics, and it gave a role for philosophy to function as moral criticism in the public sphere. Even if it was difficult for philosophers to work in the medical institutions without a medical degree bioethics enabled philosophers to assess genetic engineering, or the "cures"--ie., enhancement technologies--- that medicine offers us in response to our discomforts, insecurities and anxieties. A driving force behind the demand for these remedies is the medicalization of everyday life.
That was the promise. The reality has turned out to be otherwise. I am not referring to the conservative criticism of academic philosophy as arrogant philosopher kings wearing the mask of the professional expert; bioethics as a form of progressive liberalism (the patient as a person); or bioethics cuddling up to bio-medical and life sciences. My concern is with 'changing the world' meaning less Marx and more entrepreneurship in the form of for-profit consulting ventures with industry to supplement the university pay cheque. What I have in mind the way that bioethics has jumped onto bed with drug corporations: bioethicists acting as hired guns; bioethic centres being funded by the corporate dollars; and bioethicists moonlighting as corporate consultants. Ethics for hire is encouraged by the corporate university.
So the need for consultation guidelines that tacitly accepts for-profit bioethics consultation with industry but address conflict-of-interest policy by disclosing which corporations bioethicists have work for and how much money they have received. Philosophy does need to remain something more than straight market exchange protected by confidentiality agreements to remain philosophy. The the public assumes that 'the something more' would involve bioethics putting the brakes on questionable biomedical practices, rather than becoming a part of the academic/corporate wing of the advice industry.
Philosophy in the form of professional moral expertise becoming a tool of industry is the danger.
'Putting the brakes on' is necessary to sustain some measure of public credibility in the face of philosophy's embrace of market forces. Philosophy to surviving as philosophy rests on public trust that it is more than a tool for bio-medical or biotechnology industry or that bioethicists do more than act like lawyers and whisper a bit of prudent advice in the corporate ear about questionable practices.
That is the article.
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