Turner attacks bizarro world in which most bioethicists are transhumanist

In the May 7, 2004 Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) Leigh Turner, a McGill University bioethicist on a fellowship at Princeton, writes in “Beware the Celebrity Bioethicist” that most bioethicists supposedly want to talk about transhumanist topics instead of poverty. 

...Much of the work of bioethicists has a breathless, gee-whiz tone. When geneticists report that they can extend the life spans of fruit flies and worms, bioethicists immediately begin to debate the ethics of making humans immortal. When engineers develop crude prostheses and computer links for amputees, bioethicists start discussing cyborg bodies and our bionic, posthuman future....

How can bioethicists make a meaningful intellectual contribution to public debate about medicine, health care, and biotechnology?

First, bioethicists need to reconsider what should be the core of their work. We live in a world of incredible inequities in access to health care, clean water, housing, nutritious food, and other necessities of life. Instead of contributing to the media circus surrounding genetics and biotechnology, bioethicists ought to pay more attention to those inequities…

Second, bioethicists ought to be more concerned about their role in exaggerating the significance of developments in genetics and biotechnology. Scientists are nowhere near conquering aging and making humans immortal. Do we truly need to worry about what would happen should we become posthuman immortals, when so many other pressing issues face us today? Bioethicists should be less cavalier about using terms like “wonder genes,” “cyborg bodies,” and “virtual immortality” when they worry about the possible perils of biotechnology…

I don’t know where all these transhumanist bioethicists are, but I’ll write to Turner to see if he can send them our way. We’ll show them you can care about the future and inequality at the same time.