Legal, ethical limits to bioengineering debated

It is a truism that "politics makes strange bedfellows," but late Tuesday afternoon (March 20), in the Ames Courtroom of Harvard Law School's (HLS) Austin Hall, bioethics made two sets of philosophical bedfellows as strange as any Washington has seen.

The panelists for a discussion titled "Re-engineering Human Biology: What Should Be the Legal and Ethical Limits?" were Ronald M. Dworkin, Leon R. Kass, Richard A. Posner, and Michael Sandel. Based on the bodies of their past work, Dworkin and Sandel, "liberals" by most standards, and Kass and Posner, generally seen as staunch conservatives, would have been expected to pair off together.

But as HLS Dean Elena Kagan, the event moderator, told the overflow audience, the event would present a "rare opportunity to witness some unaccustomed alliances. Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner have given each other some hard knocks over the years," Kagan said, but would probably be on the same side this time. Similarly, Kass and Sandel, who took opposing positions on a number of issues as members of the President's Council on Bioethics, were likely to be aligned on placing limits on bioengineering.