Darryl Gunson University of the West of Scotland

On Bioethics and Biopolitics

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Questions

Bio-politics; Bio-ethics – lifeRelation between politics and ethics.

Is ethics more narrowly focussed?

Is it less interested in power?Are the two fields in tension?Is Bioethics a part of Biopolitics or vice versa?

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Bioethics: retrospective

US focussed ‘bioethics’ first coined in 1970s before

Kennedy Institute set up ‘Northern agenda’

Experiments and research with human subjects.

The ethics of genetics; eugenics; medical genetics

genetic engineering; and mapping the human genome.

  The ethics of organ transplantation and artificial organs, the supply of organs and selection of patients for a scarce resource.  

The ethics of death and dying. Defining and determining death; cardiopulmonary resuscitation; intensive care; allowing death; euthanasia and assisted suicide.

 The ethics of human reproduction. Abortion; contraception; and reproductive technologies.

Methods of Ethics Utilitarian  Natural law reasoning    ‘New’ Casuistry –Toulmin The ‘principlist approach’ – Tom

Beauchamp and James Childress

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Bioethics: looking to the future

‘bioethics’ incorporates: biological values and human knowledge

Bioethical issues should include wider issues such as the environment because the harvesting of plants and reproduction of animals are also vital for human survival

 The use of ‘dangerous knowledge’ - understand the significance of new knowledge and its potential misapplication (dual-use)

 Dangerous knowledge as “knowledge that has accumulated faster than the wisdom to manage it”

 Population control. World population out of control, and with advances in medicine, it can be catastrophic without the measures of birth control

 Priority problems of our time; population, peace; pollution; poverty; politics; and progress

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Expanded notion of BioethicsBroader agenda – not just US/EuropeanGlobal bioethics – UNESCOInterdisciplinary projectsRole of all forms of knowledge generation in helping people understand and act on the pressing bioethical issues of the age

Bioethics also has a legitimate interest in questions of policy and political possibility. If something is right, then the bioethics should be concerned to see it acted upon.

Important to understand the political dimension/obstacles

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What should we do?Central questions are still ultimately normative.

Should we do X?Consequences of doing X?Does it go against deeply held principles?Is it really possible?What are the social/political implications of doing X?

In order to answer these questions we need the methods and input from many forms of inquiry: philosophy, science (medicine and others), social sciences (including political inquiry)

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Biopolitics – regulating ‘life’CONSERVATIVE But non-critical biopolitics ‘Conservative’ Natural Environment

Defensive Ecological

PRODUCTIVIST But non-critical biopolitics ‘Productivist’ Dynamic New medical and scientific knowledge

Social and political implications of new technologies - Biotech

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Interim conclusion

Biopolitics and Bioethics appear similar

But, despite this, there persists the view that Biopolitics is somehow more fundamental than Bioethics

Critical Biopolitics 8

‘Critical’ Biopolitics writers

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Need to account for the ‘instability’ and ‘fragility’ between ‘politics’ and ‘life’

‘life’ not stable; ‘nature’ not stable Not isolated concepts but historically

interdependent – ‘relational’ Critical Biopolitics contains some elements of

non-critical views but aims to understand how life and politics may be historically related

Foucault: radical sociology of knowledge and subjectivity

Knowledge and power New disciplines (statistics, epidemiology, demography, biology, psychology)

‘Government’ of populations (correction, exclusion, normalisation, discipline…)

Discovering the ‘nature’ of a population leads to the possibility of shaping its behaviour and self-understanding

The exercise of power can be productive, +ve as well as -ve

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Lemke: Biopolitics as Bioanalytics

Takes Foucault further Regulation of life processes new forms of identity How the exercise of power can change our self-understanding

Necessary to understand the ‘regime of truth’ Who are the experts and who has authority?

What knowledge do they have? What language – vocabulary is used What problems –definitions are accepted as valid

Who profits; who bears the costs? Critique as ‘productive’ not just negative

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Further discussion I have long thought ‘bioethics’ can and should dig deeper than pointing

out which practical conclusions are implied by which accepted norms. But how deep?

If we are to answer the normative questions rationally, then we need to allow that some norms may need to be abandoned, modified, or supplemented with others. So, questioning prevailing norms/values/rules is part of the critical function of bioethics.

If the question is: ‘what should we do?’, or ‘should we do x?’ then anything that is relevant to answering the question rationally is part of the enterprise. This means that it must be a truly interdisciplinary endeavour.

The consequences of doing X are important too, not just for individuals, but at the level of populations – both physically and socially.

The exercise of power is of vital important too – how governments or elites (eg Big Pharma) may seek to influence behaviour and attitudes is part of the bioethical project.

We can and should ask: Is the direction of the influence desirable, ethically acceptable? Are the governments (or others) acting legitimately, ethically, legally?

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Power and subjectivity But what about the deep insight of Bio-politics – the historical-contingent relation between power and subjectivity?

It is here that perhaps Bioethics and Biopolitics are not the same, but perhaps both should be part of the broader ethical enterprise The way people understand themselves changes over time It is important to know this and to understand how it happens

This self-understanding affects what people consider ethical Is bioethics not reflexive enough? Does it not understand or does it ignore this insight?

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analytics of biopolitics?

Lemke writes of an ‘analytics of biopolitics’:“Bioethics has narrowed the terms of public debate on the relations between life and politics since the discussion is mainly conducted in ethical terms as an argument about values” (123)

Bioethics: Fails to account for the “epistemological and technological foundations

of life processes” and “ their integration into power strategies” Neglects social constraints and institutional expectations that

individuals might experience. “…reduces problems to alternatives that can be treated and decided..”

Analytics of Biopolitics: Reveals complexity, historical genesis, context Generates problems and questions; opens up new horizons Transgresses disciplinary borders 14

Conclusion Many of the virtues of Lemke’s ‘analytics’ are to be found in the expanded version of Bioethics. That version is reflexive – not only does it have an expanded agenda, but it is not afraid to inspect the very premises upon which its activities and discourses rest.

It is true that Bioethical inquiry often has a particular starting point in a debate – ‘what should be done?’ - which might seem to limit the kinds of questions that are of relevance, but even so, the critical stance of biopolitics and the questions it raises, are still relevant to the bioethical questions.

Lemke seems to have a rather dated and stereo-typical concept of Bioethics, which does not fit the reality.

In this sense, even the radical critical insights of biopolitics are part of the expanded bioethical enterprise.

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