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I have grouped the bioethical challenges into three sections: taking life (abortion and euthanasia), making life (designer babies, cloning, changes in the germline—inheritable genetic engineering), and faking life (artificial intelligence—brain implants and then humanoid robots?). These are the challenges, and they confront us from different directions. How do we maintain human dignity (for we are made in the image of God) in the face of these assaults on our integrity?

Taking Life

In 2006, the struggle to roll back abortion will continue, as we seek to contain euthanasia. Even here, in the "taking life" arena, we have allies. Not everyone who favors abortion in some circumstances favors it in all, and conscientious "pro-choice" advocates are often uneasy about abortion for handicap or for trivial reasons, even if they maintain it should be a woman's choice. On euthanasia, we have many allies. The hottest euthanasia debate at the moment is in the U.K., and just last week Professor Lord Winston, the top U.K. test-tube baby expert and no friend to pro-lifers, said that the current effort to bring in Oregon-style euthanasia was "mad."

Making Life

The cloning debate continues to rumble, and the tragi-comedy of Dr. Hwang's exploits is being widely seen as a threat to the hubristic promotion of this technology. In California, the pro-cloning $3 billion Proposition 71 is still hung up in the courts, as public sentiment and liberal political opinion becomes increasingly critical of a project that so recently they had favored. The passage by Congress of the umbilical cord blood bill shows that we are not dependent on costly and ethically controversial research to get real "stem cell cures."

Faking Life

This may yet emerge as "the big one." While we applaud technology that could, for example, give brain-damaged people the chance to lead full lives, if that same technology is used to enable healthy (and no doubt wealthy) people to become superhuman, it raises huge problems. Nanotechnology—our capacity to manipulate matter on a very small scale—could prove the key, and it needs to be handled responsibly. The debates around these questions will compound in significance during 06.

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Previous Life Matters columns include:

Peter Singer Meets Dr. Hwang | The ethics of the Brave New World. (Jan. 5, 2006)

Bethlehem's Bioethics | Christmas in the early 21st century. (Dec. 22, 2005)

A Common Cause for Our Common Humanity | Left and right come together in defense of us. (Dec. 14, 2005)

Face Off—and Back On | Face transplants raise more questions than answers. (Dec. 8, 2005)

Bioethics in Narnia? | C. S. Lewis was way ahead of the curve. (Nov. 30, 2005)

Inventing Ethics | A collaborator walks out on the South Korean cloning genius, citing ethical lapses. (Nov. 18, 2005)

The Killing Fields of Holland: Next It's the Kids | From the Netherlands to California, from stem cells to nanotechnology, how we treat life matters. (Nov. 9, 2005)

Nations United on Bioethics | But is anybody in the West reading the new declaration? (Oct. 19, 2005)

Dr. Frist's Dilemma | The Majority Leader's contradictions mirror the opinions of the public at large. (Oct. 11, 2005)

Cloning Still Haunts California | Remember Prop. 71? Stem-cell research supporters hope voters don't remember the promises they made. (Oct. 5, 2005)

Leon Kass, a Bioethics Legend, Steps Down | The man who led the President's Council on Bioethics brought protests from the industry and directed groundbreaking studies. (Sept. 21, 2005)

A Manufactured Womb of One's Own | The commodification of children and an admission of stem-cell hype. (Sept. 8, 2005)

More CT articles on bioethics are available on our Life Ethics page.

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January (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50