Immortality

...Yet he felt that the nomination was hasty, and would split the church down the middle...

...O F SEVERAL MIND Mr, Fe, R ANDREW LUSTIG IMMORTALITY Coming soon to a pharmacy near you n December, the President's Council on Bioethics released Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (HarperCollins...

...It soberly considers efforts to make "better children" through genetic screening and embryo testing, and to modify behavior with psychotropics like Ritalin...

...Daniel Callahan has spoken with regret about the "moral minimalism" at work in how most bioethical issues are framed these days...

...It critiques widespread efforts to attain "superior performance" through drug use, especially in sports, and concludes that such practices, by thwarting standards of traditional competition, may under-cut the values associated with "natural" efforts...

...Despite that imprecision, I applaud the Council's effort to widen the philosophical scope of public discussion...

...A central problem in bioethics is that, in the interest of methodological purity and in deference to "pluralism," it tends to restrict the range of our moral considerations by discounting appeals to imagination and intuition as merely "speculative" musings...

...Yet the report provides a broader vantage from which to assess such advances...

...The archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of the Communion, but nothing more...

...Who, save the inveterate pessimist, will not find in the promises of biotechnology a cornucopia of benefits...

...The contrast between the Council and the advocates of inevitable progress is dear...

...Of greater interest are concerns the report labels "essential"—the need to respect embodied human nature as "given" and "gifted," as more than merely "raw material to be molded according to human will...

...On the latter side stand those who appeal to human mastery, to technique, to new ways of responding to human misery...

...Most Anglican churches are waiting on the results of the new commission convened by Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, before deciding on their action...

...In both these commitments—to a "classical" style and in its appeal to the commonweal—the Council may be swimming against intellectual fashion, but the effort is bracing...

...The wisdom we seek may be bet-ter found by enlisting vision and imagination rather than dismissing them...

...What is the nature of human nature...

...Second, in bioethics, as elsewhere in the academy, increasing allegiance is paid to the canons of postmodernism, whereby appeals to broader understandings of the goods of persons and society are reflexively viewed as evidence of elitism or oppression or both...

...Bioethics often appears timid about engaging the larger questions that animated the field in its infancy: What do we mean by a good life, by a good death...

...These are large and hotly disputed claims...

...Nor do artificial means necessarily taint the ends achieved...

...The report identifies many "familiar bases of concern"—about safety and efficacy, about justice in the likely distribution of the benefits of enhancement, about commodification...

...The six-part report provides a balanced but critical assessment of actual and prospective developments in biotechnology...

...He was even willing last year to sacrifice the future of his friend Jeffrey John, a celibate gay man nominated to the See of Reading, who stepped aside after protests from evangelicals and traditionalists...

...Indeed the Ugandan Church has already declared itself out of communion with ECUSA and in communion with dissident Episcopalians who have formed a new network of parishes and dioceses...

...Still, the Council is literally "conservative" in two deeper and more positive senses than its critics (including many of my col-leagues) seem willing to admit First, popular pundits, and the cheerleading scientists on whom they rely, often rush to characterize new possibilities as posing unique dilemmas that elude the traditional categories of political and moral thought...

...and the need to avoid interventions that, in merely producing results (euphoria, say), sever such effects from the source of their human meaning: "The point is less the exertions of good character against hardship, but the manifestation of an alert and self-experiencing agent making his deeds flow intentionally from his willing, knowing, and embodied soul...

...It raises fundamental questions about extending significantly the human life span or even (for some true believers) recasting aging as a conquer-able disease...

...Austen Ivereigh ANGLICAN ANGST Is communion possible...

...but I'm warningyou, it's gonna be expensive...

...W hen the U.S...

...Episcopal Church (ECUSA) decided in November to consecrate an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire, it was a given that splits in the worldwide Anglican Communion would follow, and that they would go deep...

...This weakness was dramatically underscored by ECUSA primate Frank Griswold's decision to proceed with the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, only a month after a unanimous declaration by the Anglican primates urging him not to...

...Still, ECUSA's decision dramatically raised the question of what was actually meant by the term Anglican Communion, if one province could simply ignore all the others on a question of faith and morals...

...we all know persons whose true char"We came up with a pill that cures everything...

...Invoking human nature as a "given" and deserving of respect does not, in itself, illuminate the choices to be made about what enhancements are morally acceptable...

...Williams knew that John was not in violation of the church's position that homosexual "genital acts" are not permissible for clergy...

...the examples they deploy are invariably wrenching individual cases...

...SCHWADRON Commonweal 7 February 13, 2004 acter seems more, rather than less, evident after taking antidepressants...

...For readers seeking clear and unambiguous guidelines, much of the discussion will seem quite imprecise...

...Not everyone agreed with that assessment: there were the usual appeals to conscience, prophecy, and autonomy...

...the Primates' Meeting (which occurs at least once a year) and the Lambeth Conference (which convenes about every ten years) produce "agreed positions" which have no legal effect unless individual churches enactthem...

...How dare we argue against the imperative of science, expressed in Francis Bacon's dictum as "the relief of the human estate...

...Yet imagination is no idle power when thinking about where we may be headed in our Promethean quest to change human nature...

...The report, while acknowledging a diversity of views about enhancement, seeks to anchor its discussion in shared moral and metaphysical concerns—the nature of human nature, and the social and political implications of unfettered choices in altering the human prospect through biotechnology...

...Instead, it initiates a broad-ranging, perhaps prophetic, public debate...

...His strategy has been clear: alCommonweal 8 February 13, 2004...

...The primates had agreed that both Scripture and tradition were against the consecration, and that to proceed would "tear the fabric of our communion at its deepest level...

...The commission, chaired by Ireland's primate, Robin Eames, begins meeting this month to examine how the Anglican Communion can bridge the chasms that have opened up between and within its member churches over homosexuality...

...Until now the Anglican Communion—a fairly recent historical entity—has had virtually no juridical expression, and certainly no international body of doctrine or common law comparable to those of the Catholic Church...

...He has made no secret of his view that the church's agreed position on homosexuality will change, just as it did over slavery or usury...

...While it discusses the topics noted above, the report is less concerned about offering a "list of many things to think about than a picture of one big thing to think about: the dawning age of biotechnology and the greatly augmented power it is providing us, not only for gaining better health but also for improving our natural capacities and pursuing our own happiness...

...That may well be the case...

...Are there appropriate limits to our quest toovercome finitude and suffering...

...It considers the promises and perils of seeking "happy souls" through mood-enhancing drugs, and reflects on key aspects of human experience that may be undercut or even lost by such interventions...

...By contrast, the Council resists conflating scientific with moral novelty: "the age of biotechnology is not so much about technology itself as it is about human beings empowered by biotechnology" and the ways that human desires themselves may "be transformed and inflated by the new technological powers...

...What was historically seen as the strength of Anglicanism—and the legal purpose, if not exactly the reason, of Henry VIII's break with Rome—has recently been exposed as its weakness...

...Rowan Williams is a liberal Anglo-Catholic who cares deeply about the ecclesiological value of communion...

...Since its inception, the Council has been accused of being politically conservative, especially in contrast to the membership of the National Bioethics Advi-sory Commission under President Bill Clinton...

...But Bishop Griswold went ahead even after he had signed the primates' statement, a reversal described by Archbishop Bernard Malango, the Ugandan primate of Central Africa, as a "dishonest, false, and great betrayal...

...The solution lies either in developing new boundaries of doctrine and discipline—a new venture for the Communion— or in further loosening the bonds among churches...

...but for the sake of unity he has upheld the position agreed on at Lambeth in 1991 and reinforced by the primates in 1998...

...Those more cautious about the meaning of biotechnology, including many members of the current Council, arehardly opposed to finding cures for genetic diseases or responding to significant suffering...

...Whatever the commission members decide, their report in September is certain to point to a new shape for the Anglican Church...

...the Anglican Consultative Council, which oversees the Communion between Primates' Meetings, is merely advisory...

...Unlike some earlier commissions (and its own earlier report on cloning), the Council here does not make specific recommendations...