These days, it seems that everything is about bioethics.
These days, it seems that everything is about bioethics. Case in point: A zoologist named Sam Zeveloff has criticized RFK Jr. in Stat News for disrespecting a dead raccoon back in 2001 by allegedly dissecting its penis. This act, the emeritus professor claims, raises “critical questions” that must be addressed.
Oh my. One wonders about the possible moral stakes of this historical cadaveric mutilation.
Such phallus-collecting, we are told by Zeveloff, is fine so long as it’s done for a valid scientific or educational purpose. In fact, the author brags that he has collected raccoon phalluses himself, some of which are displayed at the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Okaaay.
But Kennedy’s cadaveric collecting wasn’t, from a bioethical standpoint, properly “scientific”:
If Kennedy collected a raccoon specimen without a defined scientific or educational purpose, the ethical justification becomes less clear. Indeed, the public has no idea about why he would stop a car filled with his family members and cut out a raccoon’s penis from a carcass.
Because he’s weird? Or he was high? Or he did it for a lark? But who cares? It was roadkill, soon to be consumed by crows in any event.
The author brings up other purported incidents during which Kennedy allegedly disrespected animal carcasses, such as leaving a dead bear cub in Central Park — that was odd, but not an issue of bioethics — and supposedly cutting the head off a dead whale.
Attention must be paid! These represent instances of serious disrespect toward dead animals:
Taken individually, these incidents contain elements of ambiguity. Collectively, they suggest a pattern in which purpose and respect are lacking.
Zeveloff then tries to tie these incidents of bioethical sin to Kennedy’s role as secretary of health and human services:
These inconsistencies matter not only because of the acts themselves, but because of the office Kennedy holds. As the nation’s top health official, his position depends on public trust, scientific credibility, and a commitment to the responsible stewardship of life.
Right, stewardship of life, primarily human.
The issue, then, is not whether these actions are scientific in a narrow sense, nor whether they are merely unconventional. It is whether they reflect the deliberation, justification, and respect that a consideration of bioethics requires, especially from those entrusted with leadership in health and science.
Oh, please. Mainstream bioethics — in the policy sense — is just left-wing politics by another name. It’s all subjective in any event, and none of us is required to take into consideration what bioethicists think.
The author strains for relevance:
There is a quiet irony herein worth noting. As secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy oversees the National Institutes of Health, which houses the NIH Department of Bioethics.
To be sure, there has been a lot about the Department of Bioethics of the National Institutes of Health that we could criticize in the past few decades, particularly during Covid. But since Zeveloff’s essay is about respecting animals, one would think that the author would praise RFK and the NIH for reducing support for research on living animals. Instead, he bemoans long past incidents of fauna carcass “disrespect.”