Pinker tells bioethics what its new moral imperative is, or not

Steven Pinker has written a provocative opinion piece today in the Boston Globe about bioethics. It was apparently sparked by a new technique for editing genomes, namely CRISPR-Cas9, and the social, political and ethical responses to this novel biotechnology. In a nutshell, Pinker states that promising new biotechnologies for improving human health like CRISPR-Cas9 should be aggressively pursued, and " ... the primary moral goal for today's bioethics can be summarized in a single sentence. Get out of the way." If bioethicists are not getting out of the way, they are, um, in the way. And if they are in the way, then they are blocking the bonanza of benefits that science could produce. With horrifying results.

My first reaction was: how is this new bioethics skill taught? Should there be classes that teach it in a stepwise manner, i.e. where you first learn not to butt in, then how to just step a bit aside, followed by somewhat getting out of the way, and culminating in totally screwing off? What would the syllabus look like? Wouldn't avoiding bioethics class altogether be a sign of success?

But seriously, how does Pinker get to this conclusion? Answer: a number of shaky assumptions. The first assumption is that health outcomes are primarily driven by biotechnological advances, rather than (say) non-biomedical driven changes in the social determinants of health. That first and controversial assumption is needed in combination with a second one about bioethics, i.e. thwarting important research is the primary goal of bioethics as it is currently practiced. That view of bioethics comes in the form of a massive, bloated straw man:

A truly ethical bioethics should not bog down research in red tape, moratoria, or threats of prosecution based on nebulous but sweeping principles such as 'dignity', 'sacredness', or 'social justice'. Nor should it thwart research that has likely benefits now or in the near future by sowing panic about speculative harms in the distant future. These include perverse analogies with nuclear weapons and Nazi atrocities, science-fiction dystopias like 'Brave New World' and 'Gattaca' and freak-show scenarios like armies of cloned Hitlers, people selling their eyeballs on eBay, or warehouses of zombies to supply people with spare organs. 

Well, yes, bioethics should not be insane. But maybe people just have less wacky short and long-term concerns about gene editing. Pinker brushes this aside too, saying that slowing down science even a little bit causes devastating harm (see first assumption), and since we can't reliably predict long-term implications of science anyway, why hold us back by discussing them? So old bioethics of constraint and caution to the side! Let biotechnological research be free of impediment, so we (in the better off countries, mostly) can feast on its benefits! But whoa, wait a minute. He also writes:

Of course, individuals must be protected from identifiable harm, but we already have ample safeguards for the safety and informed consent of patients and research subjects. 

Where do those protections come from? Old bioethics, the kind that does not step out of the way. And although those protections are (more or less) in place, it is not insane and irresponsible to discuss research on human subjects involving gene editing in order to get some grip on what the 'identifiable harms' might be, what informed consent should involve, and what safeguards would be appropriate. And it is not just silly bioethicists that worry these sorts of things: the call for a moratorium was made by the scientist that invented CRISPR-Cas9 in the first place.

On closer inspection, what is Pinker saying? Not a lot. Science is awesome, when it leads to good things; irrationality is irrational. So as far as this opinion piece goes, it might have been better to get out of the way.