As dangerous as biomedical technology may be…

…the philosophy behind them is even more threatening, says Dr. Leon Kass.

“Scientific ideas and discoveries” he said, “are being enlisted to do battle against our traditional religious and moral teachings, and even our self-understanding as creatures with freedom and dignity.”
 
In a speech to the Manhattan Institute last month, Dr. Kass, one of the most prominent public intellectuals dealing with bioethical issues, also pointed out that in many cases, these technical achievements are being used “for purposes beyond therapy, and may soon be used to transform human nature itself.”

It’s not all science lab stuff, either.

“The Pill. In vitro fertilization. Surrogate wombs. Cloning. Genetic engineering. Organ swapping. Mechanical spare parts. Performance–enhancing drugs. Computer implants into brains. Ritalin for the young, Viagra for the old, Prozac for everyone. Virtually unnoticed, the train to Huxley’s dehumanized Brave New World has already left the station,” Kass said.

Are we sufficiently stunned? There’s more…

But even these dehumanizing technological instruments are not as great a threat as the philosophy driving most of the biomedical research community. Dire as some of these issues are, he said, they point to a deeper, underlying “philosophical challenge: one that threatens how we think about who and what we are.”

The proverbial frog is starting to boil to death. When it gets worse by degrees, it isn’t detected and avoided. Worse still, it’s packaged as progress. 

He identifies a “quasi-religious faith” that he calls “soul-less scientism” a materialist philosophy that “believes that our new biology, eliminating all mystery, can give a complete account of human life.”
 
Kass clearly identifies this philosophy as a “threat to our humanity”, saying it proposes to provide a “purely scientific” explanation of “human thought, love, creativity, moral judgment, and even why we believe in God.”
 
The stakes, Kass warned, are high. “All friends of human freedom and dignity—including even the atheists among us — must understand that their own humanity is on the line.”

In other words, we can’t afford not to have this conversation.