Overview

Argues that applied bioethics should embrace utilitarian decision analysis, thus avoiding recommendations expected to do more harm than good. Governments, health professionals, patients, research institutions, and research subjects look to bioethicists for guidance in making important decisions about medical treatment and research. And yet, argues Jonathan Baron in Against Bioethics, applied bioethics lacks the authority of a coherent guiding theory and is based largely on intuitive judgments. Baron proposes an alternative, arguing that bioethics could have a coherent theory based on utilitarianism and decision analysis. Utilitarianism holds that the best option is the one that does the most expected good. Decision analysis provides a way of thinking about the risks and trade-offs of specific options. Like economics, utilitarian decision analysis makes predictions of expected good in complex situations, using data when possible, and focusing human judgment on the issues relevant to consequences. With such a guiding theory, bioethics would never yield decisions that clearly go against the expected good of those involved, as some do now. Baron discusses issues in bioethics that can be illuminated by such analysis, including ""enhancements"" to nature in the form of genetics, drugs, and mind control; reproduction; death and end-of-life issues, including advance directives, euthanasia, and organ donation; coercion and consent; conflict of interest and the reform of internal review boards; and drug research. Although Baron opposes current practice in bioethics, he argues that by combining utilitarianism and decision analysis, bioethics can achieve its aims of providing authoritative guidance in resolving thorny medical and ethical issues.

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Reviews

Baron's diagnosis is correct: much is lacking in how bioethics has been translated into policy and practice. His proposed therapy, greater reliance on utilitarianism and decision theory, may not be a complete answer, but it moves the field in the right direction. Baron's critique, and his proposed solutions, deserve a wide readership. --Barbara A. Koenig, Professor of Medicine, Mayo College of Medicine Against Bioethics is a well-written, lucid, nontechnical exposition of how utilitarianism and its technical cousin, decision analysis, can be applied to a variety of bioethical problems including assisted suicide, informed consent, and the justifications for going against nature (a particularly intriguing chapter on genetic engineering and stem cell research). For the most part, the book avoids the computational complexities that have limited the audience for a decision-analytic view of these problems. Instead, it focuses on the philosophical principles at stake and works out their implications for action. Its critique of specific solutions recommended by applied bioethicists deserves serious consideration. Arthur Elstein , Professor Emeritus of Medical Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, past president, Society for Medical Decision Making *Against Bioethics* is a well-written, lucid, nontechnical exposition of how utilitarianism and its technical cousin, decision analysis, can be applied to a variety of bioethical problems including assisted suicide, informed consent, and the justifications for 'going against nature' (a particularly intriguing chapter on genetic engineering and stem cell research). For the most part, the book avoids the computational complexities that have limited the audience for a decision-analytic view of these problems. Instead, it focuses on the philosophical principles at stake and works out their implications for action. Its critique of specific solutions recommended by applied bioethicists deserves serious consideration. --Arthur Elstein, Professor Emeritus of Medical Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, past president, Society for Medical Decision Making

Ignore the title. Baron doesn't want to get rid of bioethics, but to show us how we can do it better. His acute diagnosis of the pervasive errors of deontological approaches to bioethics deserves a wide readership. - Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University

Author Information

Jonathan Baron is Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of M orality and Rational Choice, Thinking and Deciding, Judgment Misguided: Intuition and Error in Public Decision Making, and other books.

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