Leon Kass
Leon Kass
Leon Richard Kassis an American physician, scientist, educator, and public intellectual, best known as proponent of liberal education via the "Great Books," as an opponent of human cloning, life extension and euthanasia, as a critic of certain areas of technological progress and embryo research, and for his controversial tenure as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. Although Kass is often referred to as a bioethicist, he eschews the term and refers to himself as "an...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth12 February 1939
CountryUnited States of America
In cloning, in contrast, reproduction is asexual - the cloned child is the product not of two but of one.
The abortion controversy is important for what it says about our stance toward procreation and children altogether.
It's a short step from the belief that every child should be wanted to the belief that a child exists to satisfy our wants.
Cloning looks like a degrading of parenthood and a perversion of the right relation between parents and children.
Our only responsibility is to live our own life and take care of our own children.
Perhaps you could sympathize with those who seek to replace a dead child with a copy, or to copy a parent or a relative or even a celebrity.
We do restrict so-called reproductive freedom. We do not allow polygamy, we do not allow incest, we do not allow the buying and selling of babies.
to consider not just the technologies ... but also to see how those things which impinge on our humanity, in fact, touch our personal aspirations, our human longings, our duties.
I believe that if we really do pour our resources into these alternatives, ... we might find a morally unproblematic and uncontroversial way to get this research done.
Nobody knew in advance that in vitro fertilization would be, by and large, safe.
What does it mean to be an individual? What does it mean to flourish?
It seems to me that a kind of thinking which is not technocratic has an opportunity for a renaissance in this country.
One should proceed with caution. We may simply not be wise enough to do some of the kinds of engineering things that people are talking about doing.
Limits have to be set on how far one can simply use the... cleverness that we have to make changes.