I see that Daniel Moore has taken a non-swipe at Glenn Reynolds. En passant as it were, en route to these articles.

Hmm... Glenn Reynolds manages to mention Leon Kass without some ad hominem, sophomoric attack attached to Mr. Kass's name. Is he turning over a new leaf?

I hear that Reynolds hasn’t eaten any puppies lately, either.

Hey Daniel. If you’re in the market for sophomoric, emotion-based argument, check this out. I hope you’ll harbor no ill feelings afterward. In fact, you’ll find a couple of posts of mine that are more to your liking here and here. Please do enjoy them. Sadly though, now is the time on Sprockets when we wrap up the small talk and become very unpleasant.

I suspect, and quite strongly too, that you are letting your feelings of fondness and respect for your old mentor come between you and clarity of thought. You take Reason to task for not having read and understood the correct meaning of Kass’s writings.

You say that "Leon Kass is clearly a man who doesn't like the idea of people living longer and healthier lives, even if he can't come up with a coherent factual argument against it" but it is quite clear that you have not actually read a word of Kass with an open mind because he comes up with many reasons for medicine directed at curing and thus living healthy, longer lives. However, death is not a disease or defect and does not require 'curing.'

Quite frankly, from your discussions at 'Fight Aging!' about Leon Kass, I would recommend that you, along with Prof. Reynolds, needs to read a little more from the man you argue against. Because you show a severe lack of understanding of his position. I recommend starting with "Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity."

This is a rather common informal debating tactic, and in my opinion not a very productive one. “If you haven’t read such-and-such by so-and-so, you have no RIGHT to an opinion on this subject!” is one of the more extreme variants of it. Thank you for being more moderate than that, but I believe your advice (and reading list) is misplaced.

Leon Kass is a Public Figure, working in the Public Arena, doing his energetic best to influence Public Policy. He should be able to take the heat. So let him. Should the greater public (why, that’d be us!), have no “legitimate” opinions until we’ve been “properly” educated? I think not.

As it happens, I’ve read a great deal of Kass over the last twenty years (as you know), so in a certain sense, Reason doesn’t need to. He could read me, instead. But if both Reason and I have come to differing conclusions than you have regarding Dr. Kass, perhaps it could be partially ascribed to his mode of presentation. My assumption is that you have had long and fruitful conversations with the man, exploring rich lines of inquiry. Quite delightful I’m sure, if you like that sort of thing. I, on the other hand, have had to rely on his mere words, lying dessicated and inert on paper, which makes a huge difference. Or perhaps one of us is just wrong.

Now, when I am trying to be persuasive (or “con people” as my mother used to put it), I prefer a face-to-face encounter. There are subtleties of feedback, timing, and expression that allow for a much more effective presentation. I imagine it’s the same with Dr. Kass. A teacher, a pupil, a log between them and all of that, hey? So it does not surprise me that you, who have known him personally, should find him far more credible than either Reason or myself. Our impressions of the great man are necessarily filtered through various media, as are those of most other Americans. That’s just the way it is.

That being the case, we are far from being alone in our “misperceptions” of him.

First of all, "loss of dignity", is an abstract concept. It may represent some sort of symbolic truth for Kass, but it's significantly harder to define than a quality like sadness, pain, or grief. It's also incredibly subjective. Is "loss of dignity" limited to the way I feel about myself, or does it also encompass what you think about me? Have I lost dignity when I lose my virginity? Refuse to duel? Kill someone in combat?

As far as I understand him, Kass acknowledges that he's talking about an abstract harm and then embraces it. Its like he's trying to assert that symbolic harm is the scariest kind. Why? Because he says it is. Moreover, by retreating to the abstract, the question of whether a particular technology might actually cause a loss of dignity can't be challenged by real life counter examples...Tellingly, I think, Kass retreated when faced with any real life examples.

Hey, wait, she actually met him in person. Oops.

I refuse to comment on the newfound role Professor and Presidential Bioethics Committee Chair Leon Kass has carved out for himself as "private citizen" lobbying Congress, utterly independent of his role as Chair of the President's own bioethics panel. It isn't that it is a surprising announcement, and the incredible gall of it requires no comment, but what is amazing to most who are reading Rick Weiss' revelation about the 'Neocon March on Washington' and the 'Bioethics Agenda' is how stupid a political move this is for the PCB...

There.That’s an excerpt from “The American Journal of Bioethics”. It’s from their Editors Blog. Here’s another.

I have an old-fashioned idea. That idea is that chairs of Presidential bioethics councils/commissions should, once appointed, go about their business with as much objectivity and neutrality as they can muster in order to facilitate the work of the council and ultimately to serve the American people. I have this idea because in years past it has been the case that chairing these councils or commissions has been viewed as a distinct honor and well worth the price of setting aside personal views at least for the duration of the group's work. It was with great distress, therefore, that I read Rick Weiss's article on p. 6 of the Washington Post this morning, "Conservatives Draft a 'bioethics agenda" for President."

And another.

Well, finally we got our hands on the heretofore unpublished document, "Bioethics for the Second Term: Legislative Recommendations," written by Chair of the President's Council for Bioethics Leon Kass and distributed to Congress this week in a lobbying push led by Kass himself. It contains the grand plan for all sorts of bans and restrictions of science to be enacted by the U.S. Congress, and has been unabashedly promoted by Kass - who says that he is not acting as Presidential Council Chair during his lobbying efforts.
The agenda is sweeping, conservative, and odd enough that it has angered Republicans in Congress more than Democrats; the latter are beside themselves with joy at watching the right wing rip the Kass document to shreds for being too liberal. Democrats should not be too giddy - much of what is here could be pushed through the executive branch and left to the courts and states to reject.

I hear that whole U.N. thing didn't go so well either.

Given that I have never met the man, I believe that for my own limited purposes my perceptions of Kass may be substantially more correct than your own.

One of those perceptions is that Kass is stunningly inept at advancing his own agenda. His forays into public policy have generated priceless levels of outrage on the opposing side, levels that Madison Avenue could only dream of aspiring to. He hands his political adversaries fifty caliber soundbites on a platinum chafing dish and then sadly shakes his head when they turn around and shoot him. For pity’s sake Daniel, the most debased, degenerate, leather-lunged ward heeler has better political instincts than Leon Kass. Charles Rangel has better political instincts than Leon Kass.

But it would be a misperception on YOUR part to think that his adversaries don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Out of the entire vast body of his Thought, they most certainly understand the parts that are important to them. They hear what he’s saying, they understand it, and they don’t much like it. You could call it focus.

Now, I have no difficulty distinguishing between a man and his work. You say he’s a great guy. Thoughtful, brilliant, caring, whatever. I say fine, granted. The man is not the book. You say if we just understood him better, as you do, we would see that our concerns refer to a crude caricature, and not the unjustly maligned humanitarian himself. I say, not so fast.

Whatever allegedly misguided notions I may have about Leon Kass are based largely on his own words, dessicated and inert though they may be. I have bought his books. I have read them. I have understood what he is trying to say and, amazingly, I disagree with him. He’s wrong, Daniel.

Just because he thinks he’s on the side of the angels doesn’t make it so. Take a good look in your history books. Plenty of good men, holy men even, have committed unspeakable acts, unshakeable in the righteousness of their convictions. Your beloved Professor is setting himself up to be one more in a sad line-up. Well, that or a laughingstock. That he would presume to set bounds on the human lifespan, is simply undeniable. It’s a plain fact. It can’t be spun. His motives, whether benevolent or not, are irrelevant. His sterling character is irrelevant. Even his great erudition is irrelevant. It’s his actions, and where they will take us, that worry me. He wants to force us down a particular path, and he’s doing it for our own good.

You say he’s on the side of life? I say he’s on the side of life as he knows it, as he has chosen to define it. And he doesn’t think anyone should try to change that definition. Bad Things might happen.

I don’t believe that. Doubling the human lifespan would not be a Bad Thing. Do you believe that, Daniel? You know that he believes that. What’s worse, he wants to Do Something about it. Am I making a bad call here? Honestly?

If you think I’m misreading him, it’s hard for me to see how. Shorn from context, words can be twisted, but that technique only takes you so far. I think that I am reading him loud and clear. Here, you can double-check me. How is it exactly, that I am misreading the following “Kassages”?

I wish to make the case for the virtues of mortality. Against my own strong love of life, and against my even stronger wish that no more of my loved ones should die, I aspire to speak truth to my desires by showing that the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual, whether he knows it or not.

Paradoxically, even the young and vigorous may be suffering because of medicines success in removing death from their personal experience. Those born since the discovery of penicillin represent the first generation ever to grow up without experience or fear of probable death at an early age. They look around and see that virtually all their friends are alive.

What we should do is work to prevent human cloning by making it illegal. We should aim for a global legal ban, if possible, and for a unilateral national ban at a minimum.... renegade scientists may secretly undertake to violate such a law, but we can deter them by both criminal sanctions and monetary penalties...

...if one could do something about Alzheimer's, if one could do something about chronic arthritis, if one could do something about general muscular weakness and not, somehow, increase the life expectancy to 150 years, I would be delighted.

Withering is nature's preparation for death, for the one who dies and for the ones who look upon him.

...mortal danger is contained in the now popular notion that a person has a right over his body, a right that allows him to do what ever he wants to it or with it. Civil libertarians may applaud such a notion, as an arguably logical expansion of the right of privacy, of the right to be free from unwanted or offensive touchings. But for a physician, the idea must be unacceptable.

even the perfectly voluntary use of powers to prolong life ... carries dangers of degradation, depersonalization and general enfeeblement of soul.

Produce four, five, six generations alive at one time, and, by the way, continue the dwindling family size...One child, two parents, four grandparents, not counting divorce. We multiply this out. Sixty-four great-great-somethings focused on this one little guy. And that particular little guy is supposed to be looking after the well-being of his parents when they get older.

I don’t know whether the earliest embryo is or is not my equal. I simply don’t know. I see the power of the argument from continuity, and yet my moral intuitions cut in a somewhat different direction, even if the existential choice were between preserving my embryo or rescuing someone else’s child...since I don’t know whether the early embryo is or is not one of us, and since the choice before us now is not this child versus this embryo but whether to engage in a speculative project of embryo research, I am inclined not to treat human embryos less well than they might deserve.

....Our cultural pluralism and easygoing relativism make it difficult to reach consensus on what we should embrace and what we should oppose....Since we live in a democracy, moreover, we face political difficulties in gaining a consensus to direct our future....we are in danger of forgetting what we have to lose, humanly speaking.

....we have nationally prohibited commercial traffic in organs for transplantation, even though a market would increase the needed supply....

Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s repugnances are today calmly accepted—not always for the better. In some crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power completely to articulate it....

But the present danger posed by human cloning is, paradoxically, also a golden opportunity.... we can strike a blow for the human control of the technological project.... The prospect of human cloning, so repulsive to contemplate, is the occasion for deciding whether we shall be slaves of unregulated innovation, and ultimately its artifacts.... The humanity of the human future is now in our hands.

A few weeks ago an excellent federal anti-cloning bill was introduced in Congress, sponsored by Senator Sam Brownback and Representative David Weldon. This carefully drafted legislation seeks to prevent the cloning of human beings at the very first step, by prohibiting somatic cell nuclear transfer to produce embryonic clones, and provides substantial criminal and monetary penalties for violating the law....it offers us the best chance—the only realistic chance—that we have to keep human cloning from happening... Getting this bill passed will not be easy....

We are still early enough in the game, I think, that at least a certain amount of public discussion might be in order. We might try to hope to separate those interventions that deal with the degenerations that are not necessarily life-prolonging

I would, I think, be inclined as we go forward over the next decades, to try to argue with the immortalists and the various other people who, it seems to me, have a very shallow view of this matter....a lot of idealists are shallow...there is a certain utopianism that is based upon the belief that if you somehow remove various kinds of limits, you will be producing simply good things...it seems to me that to simply say life is good and more is therefore better—if that's as far as your thinking goes, then I would say it's shallow.

Michigan, for example, has made it a felony, punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten years or a fine of not more than $10 million, or both, to “intentionally engage in or attempt to engage in human cloning,” where human cloning means “the use of human somatic cell nuclear transfer technology to produce a human embryo"....

The humanity of the human future is now in our hands.

What sounds great in a dorm room bull session, sounds fairly awful coming out of federal policy makers. I tend to think he’s exceeding his mandate.

I also tend to think concretely and simply. Hey, it’s just the way I am. Philosophy, as such, has often struck me as being a diversion from what truly matters. As well, it can sometimes mutate into yet another nasty “ism” and before you know it they’re rounding up and shooting the optometrists and planting rice on all the golf courses. Too much cerebration can blind men to the reality around them. They get caught up in grandiose dreams and lose sight of the basics. That’s why I like my scenarios simple.

If our children are to flower, we need to sow them well and nurture them…But if they are truly to flower, we must go to seed; we must wither and give ground.

Now tell the truth. If there were a pill that could add ten healthy years to your life, wouldn’t you take it? No icky pieces of embryos, no religious proscriptions or anguished moral dilemmas, just a simple magical pill, guaranteed to work. So would you? Would you want your girlfriend to take it too? How about your Dad, or your Mom, or Best Friend or Dog?

Would you ever tell those people that they shouldn’t take it? Just how well would that go over, anyway?

And let’s say the ten years go by, and it’s time to take the pill again. Do you have qualms? He does.

And again, ten years after that, can you picture yourself as saying “Dad, wait! Don’t do it! Doctor Kass says you have to wither for us to flourish fully! Mom, please stop and think! I’m worried about the whole human race here!”

Put that way, how ridiculous do these Kassian musings begin to sound? Think concretely. Think simply. We are talking about real people’s real lives. Some of them may be people you know. If you are out on your own now, getting an education, making a living, wooing and winning, do your parents really have to wither and die to validate your life?

I am genuinely curious.

My point here is that the personal will trump the theoretical almost every time. Barring the odd fanatic, of course. Got a sick wife? You’ll want that pill. Got a failing favorite aunt? You’ll want that pill.

Even if you think it’s “bad for society”, you’ll want that pill. Forego the pill and you will still be far, far outnumbered by the shallow, thoughtless people like me who don’t care for philosophy. We’ll want that pill.

Of course that pill is still imaginary today. But give it fifty years, a hundred years, and who knows? For the whole of recorded history people have dreamed of such a thing, along with other mad dreams like flying through the air, or not having their babies die of dysentery, or eating till they’re stuffed, the Whole Year Round. “Someday,” they might have thought, “those wolves and bears will be afraid of us! Just you wait!” Stranger things have happened.

I expect that if it can be done at all, the next century or so should tell us. Barring the odd fanatic, of course. A self-guiding, self-perpetuating mandarinate of conservative bioethicists might manage to slow progress down a bit. Not everywhere and not forever, but long enough to be vexing. So it troubles me that people as intelligent as yourself nod approvingly and say “Yeah, he is really profound!” when Kass pronounces on human dignity and expiration dates. I wish that they would stop doing that. I think it just encourages him. I would like it even more if those selfsame people asked themselves the questions that I just asked you.

If enough of them should answer, “Yes, I am willing to die for this idiotic notion, I and my entire family,”and assuming that they really, truly meant it, then I might start to worry in earnest.

So how committed are you Daniel? "Death is not a disease or defect and does not require 'curing.'" Do you really mean that? I suspect that were it offered, you’d take the pill with no regrets. Am I correct in my assumption? If so, then as night follows the day, I must wonder why you put such credence in a man whose stated aims are so diametrically opposed to your own. Might it simply be that you like him? That would be a splendid reason to defend the man. But the man is not the book, nor is he the ideas the book contains. And some of those ideas are indefensible.

Sincerely Yours,

Justin

I am not a Luddite, I am not a hater of science. I esteem modern science and I regard it as really one of the great monuments to the human intellect...And if everybody else was worried about it, you would find me as one of its defenders. I am taking up the side that is weaker here, that needs articulation...

AFTERTHOUGHTS: Daniel, thanks for replying to my open letter with such unexpected swiftness. I hope that you enjoyed the Kipling and Wells links at least. I note that you’ve answered some of my questions, but at least two still remain open, and I would love to hear your answers.

Striving all the while for tact, I would like to know if you would object to your parents availing themselves of an inexpensive, truly effective life-extension therapy, indefinitely. If I am reading both you and Dr. Kass correctly, to live beyond our years is to cease being human, and I am wondering if you would view your parents as “no longer human” if they should happen to live past seven score and ten.

Similarly, would you feel in any way personally diminished if your parents refused to “wither and give ground” on nature’s schedule? My suspicion is that your natural human sympathies would overcome your current philosophically derived opinions. “Of course he’s still human, he’s my Dad!” would be the gist of what I’m looking for here.

Another point. Your reply seems somewhat self-contradictory. If, as you maintain, life-extension past a certain age renders us no longer human (which you say is problematic), then why are you yourself willing to use such therapies? Presumably, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Therefore, logically, anyone who wishes to use such therapies should have that same option. Which leaves us with what exactly? A vague sense of unease that the actions, which we all know we’re going to take anyway, might somehow lead to some vaguely delineated negative result? Whew! That same unease could result from almost any human action. So why are we agonizing over a decision that we know is already decided? I’m looking for the consistency here and not finding it, tiny minds and hobgoblins notwithstanding.

A parting shot. If doing things that we’ve never done before can make us inhuman, then where does our own humanity stand in relation to that of our Paleolithic ancestors? I had buttered toast for breakfast today, a profoundly unnatural act in the Paleolithic Era. Then I indulged in a prolonged act of literacy, using my spectacles, equally unnatural. Why shouldn't living a longer life get the same free pass?

Cordially Yours,

Justin