i) The fact that someone has cancer doesn’t ipso facto immunize him from moral scrutiny. Good men get cancer, bad men get cancer. The fact that John Gotti died of cancer while serving a life sentence for murder doesn’t immunize him from moral scrutiny.
ii) I myself had cancer, so playing the cancer card to guilt-trip me into silence isn’t going to work. Try some other form of emotional manipulation.
iii) Ethics routinely deals with life-and-death scenarios. That’s a basic part of bioethics. Indeed, the proverbial lifeboat scenario, which is how I framed my discussion, is a classic case. Other examples include Sophie’s Choice, the Trolley Problem, and the ticking timebomb.
So let’s not act as if discussing life-and-death outcomes is suddenly out-of-bounds.
iv) Moreover, this isn’t just hypothetical. Take Judith Jarvis Thomson’s infamous thought-experiment about the violinist. That’s hypothetical, but it’s more than hypothetical. It’s a hypothetical that’s designed to influence public policy. To determine who gets to live and who gets to die.
In addition, bioethicists like Peter Singer toy with various scenarios to promote to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.
So let’s not act as if ethicists, including secular bioethicists, think life-and-death scenarios with real-life consequences are now out-of-bounds.
v) In addition, it’s not as if Hitchens himself is especially reticent in this regard.
The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled "credulous idiot." The first such category consists of those who expected Falwell (and themselves) to be bodily raptured out of the biosphere and assumed into the heavens, leaving pilotless planes and driverless trucks and taxis to crash with their innocent victims as collateral damage. This group is so stupid and uncultured that it may perhaps be forgiven. It is so far "left behind" that almost its only pleasure is to gloat at the idea of others being abandoned in the same condition.
Did I say anything remotely like that about Hitchens? No. Rather, I raised the issue of moral consistency.
vi) Let’s move onto the specific case at hand:
Now Hitchens is one of the few people in the world who has had his entire genetic make up mapped and is receiving a new treatment that targets his own damaged DNA.
Why is Hitchens one of the few people in the world to have his entire genetic makeup mapped? Is it because he’s one of the few people in the world with esophageal cancer? I don’t think so.
No, it’s because he’s a famous cancer patient.
Now, if you were a secular bioethicist like Peter Singer, would that be the obvious way to ration medical care? Say you have two passengers in the lifeboat. There’s not enough food and water for both to survive. Who gets throw over the side of the boat?
On the one hand you have a teenage cancer patient.
On the other hand you have a 62-year-old cancer patient. What is more, he was in the high-risk category due to his voluntary lifestyle choices (hard smoker, hard drinker).
If you’re a secular bioethicist, which one becomes shark bait?
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