Bioethics, Public Moral Argument, and Social Responsibility ed. by Nancy M. P. King, Michael J. Hyde (review)

This collection was conceived as a “call to conversation” on the ways that medicine, science, and biotechnologies affect—and should affect—our lives. The book’s title itself suggests that public moral argument is what links or rhetorically mediates between bioethics and social responsibility, “interfacing” the work of scholars in bioethics, law, health, and communication ethics. As such, the collection is a call to language, where, according to the editors, language is figured as “a tool, an instrument, a means to an end” (x). In this context, the desired end is democratically oriented argument, which has the power to constitute a critical, reflexive public, even as that public is itself increasingly understood in and through the language of late modern biomedicine, risk, and responsibility.

The extent to which the various essays successfully reflect on the power of their own mediating language—their own rhetoricity—is somewhat uneven. But this is perhaps unavoidable with an interdisciplinary collection; it might even be desirable, if we accept the editors’ claim that interdisciplinarity is a necessary (but insufficient) condition of public moral argument. In their Afterword, the editors ask, “can discourse from two complementary but disparate fields provide a picture of important public issues that is both coherent and meaningful?” (165). This, they acknowledge, is the “elephantine” challenge of an interdisciplinary collection such as this, even as their Introduction had cautiously hoped for “a collective wisdom” and “a collective voice” (x). Certainly, the collection can be meaningful without necessarily being coherent or “collective.” Arguably, its disparate voices are crucial to debate and to meaning, and it would be wrong to demand a coherent philosophical orientation across individual contributions. This would impede genuine conversation.

The essays are divided into three parts. The first, “Public Moral Argument and Social Responsibility,” rather straightforwardly explores the role of language and the importance of public argument for ethical decision making. The essays raise, rather than resolve, particular difficulties for ethical debate. How, for instance, should we arrive at a consensus when public moral arguments are necessarily inconclusive (Zarefsky) and human agents are by definition fallible (Moreno)? What are some pedagogical strategies for teaching university students how to deliberate and argue effectively while respecting the nuances and sociocultural dimensions of a particular case (Coughlin et al.)?

Part two, “Moral Relationships and Responsibilities,” explores the role of moral language within concrete contexts. How, for example, are the concepts of “dignity” (Dresser) and “human nature” (Juengst) applied across public and popular discourse, and how might these make sense of human experience and shed light on bioethical analysis? In what ways has the mapping of the human genome influenced how we think and argue about ethical freedom as this intersects with genetic determinism and a subject’s spiritual understanding of “fate” or “destiny” (Churchill)? In what sense can we be “blamed” for our genetic (pre)conditions of disease and forced to “manage” these risks as well as assume the actuarial costs of potential “genetic” illness (Parrott)? The essays in this section each address some of the ethical challenges of so-called informed decision making, along with the ethical implications of decision making as a communicative practice.

The essays in part three—“The Media, the Public, and the Person”—are more explicitly self-reflexive because they theorize media and mediation per se, examining the ways that texts of all kinds constitute particular publics and persons. In the context of public health and obesity, for example, Giles and Krcmar argue for a link between obesity and mass mediated fast food advertisements. In what ways are advertisers morally accountable for the behaviors they encourage? The chapter written by Condit reflects on the ways that metaphors for genes circulate in popular discourse and inform how we feel about ourselves as ethical subjects. Condit argues for the differential effects of these metaphors between members of the general public and experts, suggesting that emotions—and...