The Program in Bioethics and Human Dignity
The Witherspoon Institute’s Program in Bioethics and Human Dignity seeks to address contemporary questions on how human beings are to be treated, what technologies truly enhance human flourishing, and what constitutes a human being. In particular, the Program addresses the vexing questions raised by new bio-technologies, responding with the most up-to-date scientific evidence and philosophical arguments. The subjects of its inquiries include embryo-destructive research, alternative sources of pluripotent stem-cells, embryo-adoption, abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, and human chimera formation. The thinking behind the Program is based on two foundations: the scientific evidence that the life of a human being begins at fertilization and hence that the early human embryo is a full - though immature - human being; and the philosophical evidence that all human beings are human persons (both at the beginning and ending of life).
The Program in Bioethics and Human Dignity has supported the book projects Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (January 2008), co-authored by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, and Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics (November 2007), co-authored by Robert P. George and Patrick Lee. The latter book treats the question of what a human person is, and how implicitly dualistic ideas of the self (identifying the body as something inhabited or possessed by the self rather than an aspect of the self) have contributed to profoundly erroneous (and destructive) beliefs about abortion, drug-taking, sex-ethics, and euthanasia.
Program Staff
Patrick Lee, Professor of Bioethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville, serves as the Project Director. Dr. Lee is the author of Abortion and the Unborn Human Life, and has collaborated in numerous projects with Professor George, most recently as co-author of the book Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics.
Patrick Lee's News and Articles
Ryan T. Anderson, an assistant editor at First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life and a Fellow of the Phillips Foundation, serves as Assistant Project Director. Previously he served as the Executive Director of the Witherspoon Institute, where he also was research assistant to Robert P. George. Mr. Anderson graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Princeton University in 2004.
Ryan T. Anderson's News and Articles
Updated June 5, 2008