Nathan Emmerich

In a series of posts published over the past couple of weeks the increasingly influential blog Impact Ethics has been preoccupied with the question of whether whoever pays the piper calls the tune. In no small degree this debate is related to similar concerns about the corrupting power of money and wealthy corporations in medical research and practice. Given that this is a bioethical issue and given that the concerns being raised often relate to the same or similar sources of money the debate is an entirely legitimate one. Nevertheless, I have some thoughts about the way in which some of the issues involved are being considered or, rather, with the way certain assumptions are configuring the terms of the debate.

The first example I would like to discuss relates to the post by Alice Dreger. Here she strongly differentiates between judging acts and, rather emotively, judging souls by which she means people or characters. I certainly do not want to suggest that we should go about approving or disproving the souls of certain bioethicists and thereby grant or deny them moral authority. Similarly I do not wish to suggest that bioethicists should not judging, or at least criticise, 'real world' acts. Certainly they should. However, I think it is important to recognise that it is souls who act and as such they can carry out their actions in better or worse ways.