Suchergebnisse

In this engaging book, Leon R. Kass, the noted teacher, scientist, and humanist, and James Q. Wilson, the preeminent political scientist to whom four U.S. presidents have turned for advice on crime, drug abuse, education, and other crises in American life, explore the ethics of human cloning, reproductive technology, and the teleology of human sexuality. Although in their lively dialogue both authors share a fundamental distrust of the notion of human cloning, they base their reticence on different views of the role of sexual reproduction and the role of the family. Professor Kass contends that in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproduction technologies that place the origin of human life in human hands have eroded the respect for the mystery of sexuality and human renewal. Professor Wilson, on the other hand, asserts that whether a human life is created naturally or artificially is immaterial as long as the child is raised by loving parents in a two-parent family and is not harmed by the means of its conception. This accessible volume promises to inform the public policy debate over the permissible conduct of genetic research and the permissible uses of its discoveries

Author editorializes the right-to-die controversy recently brought to light with the very public Terri Schaivo case and again in the Supreme Court hearing of John Roberts. States like California and Vermont are working to legalize assisted suicide while the President wishes to keep all forms illegal. However this debate is ever more present due to an increased life span and more advanced medical care which keeps people alive much longer creating a large elderly and feeble population. Also, the weakening of the family unit makes these decisions more public as doctors are increasingly forced to make these life or death decisions for patients, Author advocates the living will as a way to make ones wishes about death known to all and not subject to interpretation. Author concludes, "for unless we learn to accept both our frailties and our finitude, we are likely to find the burdens of care giving intolerable."