Bioethics: Bridge to the Future by Van Rensselaer Potter (review)

As mentioned in the opening paragraph of this review, die sprightly text made this reader feel he was living with Dr. Kendall dirough an exciting life filled with biases, setbacks, and outstanding triumphs. It is not an objective history but instead, what a good biography should be, a living picture of die man. Leo T. Samuels, M.D. Department of Biological Chemistry University of Utah Bioethics: Bridge to the Future. By Van Rensselaer Potter. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. Pp. 205. $3.95 (paper). Time was when to label a scientist "philosophical" was to bestow the kiss of death. Has that time really passed? How many Ph.D.'s do we have in the sciences, right now, who have studied philosophy, read a philosophical book, or pondered a philosophical argument? A few? Or many? How many think these questions are of any interest? If you have read this far, then let diee and me set a spell and let me tell thee about a philosophical book recently written by a biological scientist , card-carrying biochemist, and experimental cancer investigator, Van R. Potter of the University of Wisconsin. His book is entitled Bioethics. In the neologistic title Potter has, I think, misled us a bit. I guessed that what Potter had prepared for us was an ediic, a code for moral behavior of the individual , which was to be found, or based, on certain principles adduced from our present corpus of biological knowledge. I fully expected a kind of natural moral philosophy much as in the nineteenth century, before Darwin, diere was a considerable interest in natural dieology wherein the evidences for creation, and thereby a Creator, were to be found in the unfolding wonders of natural science. Perhaps Potter had brought Kant and the categorical imperative to earth via the newer biology. But, thank heaven, I was wrong. I think that what Potter really has in mind is a kind of exhortation, especially to his fellow scientists, to raise their eyes from dieir narrow professional preoccupations , and to see, cold-eyed, the nature of the awful population-ecological disaster that is thundering down upon us. It is precisely scientific activity, and the technological consequences, which must now, with each breath, self-consciously measure the onspreading vibrations which convulse the future. This awesome power now needs moral structuring, diis needs an ediic, and diis book is Potter's response. Potter's personal commitment dates from about 1957. In his own words: I began as a chemist, then chose biochemistry, then the biochemistry of cancer, then the biochemistry of one kind of cancer, and am presently interested in special aspects of that biochemistry. It is only recently—the last 10 years—that I have taken the time to look around me and to realize that there are problems more important than cancer research and that if the best minds in the world do not get busy on them, it will not matter whether the average life span is 68, 78, or 58. [P. 150] Amen, Potter, Amenl In thirteen chapters Potter wrestles with many scientific-philosophical problems . In all candor, I cannot say that his ideas are unswervingly marshaled to his 152 I Book Reviews central diesis. (Potter is a man for many seasons, and nine of his chapters were each written for some special occasion.) Potter's own personal involvement with die biomedical aspects of feedback control leads to a certain heavy-handedness and repetitive use of what, at the time, were exciting findings in the laboratory, but in the philosopher's study begin to appear somewhat precious and time-laden. And Potter's well-known fondness for schematic charts, widi many arrows leading here and there, may turn off some of his readers from the humanities. But diese are quibbles. What I found admirable about Potter's depiction of his Weltschmerz was the frank acknowledgment of the sources of die items in his stock of ideas. And what an eclectic list it is. The audiors he acknowledges, in rough count, amount to over 200. Such present culture heroes as Margaret Mead, Teilhard de Chardin, and John Kenneth Galbraith predictably are included, but Aristotle, Plato, and Kant did...