Wilting Flowers:

The Dangers of Rootless Bioethics

Bioethics is a relatively youthful field of study that assumed its modern instantiation in
the second half of the twentieth century — partly in response to the horrors of the first
half and partly to answer the multiplying challenges of scientific and technological
advances. By the end of its first decade, the four principles espoused by Beauchamp and
Childress comprised the central framework for identifying and considering bioethical
issues. Almost half a century later, the trials facing humanity continue to test our
resolve. While the recent global pandemic emphasised our scientific and technical
prowess, in many instances, the manner of our response revealed an apparent disregard
for these principles — a pattern now manifesting across multiple domains. In this paper,
I argue that a foundation rooted in the traditions stemming from Jerusalem and Athens
is crucial for the stability, cohesion, and interpretation of the four principles. I also
argue that to the extent that these principles are maligned or misinterpreted, it is
because we neglect or debase our own heritage.

The discipline of bioethics emerged simultaneously from two discrete projects in the
early 1970s. Biologist and cancer researcher Van Rensselaer Potter used the term to
describe a new discipline merging ‘biological knowledge with a knowledge of human
value systems’ aimed at bridging the perceived gap between the sciences and the
humanities.1 At the same time, Dutch physiologist Andre Hellegers, co-founder of the
Kennedy Institute of Human Reproduction and Bioethics at Georgetown University,
used the term in the context of applied medical ethics and biomedical research. The
former aimed to establish the connections between epistemological categories, while
the latter sought to formalise the ethical norms already practised in medicine. Each
plays a crucial role in our current conceptualisation of bioethics, enabling a systematic
approach to issues such as health care relationships (paternalism, informed consent),
life and death (abortion, euthanasia), distributive justice (allocation of resources),
medical practice (experimentation, human rights), environmental concerns, and
technology (innovations that challenge status-quo conceptions). In 1979, Beauchamp
and Childress published the classic text Principles of Biomedical Ethics, introducing

1
Raanan Gillon, ‘Bioethics, Overview’, The Concise Encyclopedia of the Ethics of New Technologies,
ed. R. F. Chadwick, (San Diego, Ca.: Academic Press, 2001): 2.
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their influential maxims on respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and

justice.2 These principles established the predominant framework for identifying
bioethical issues and provided a basis for the normative guidelines informing our
institutions.

Nevertheless, Beauchamp and Childress state that these principles ‘do not constitute a
general moral theory’ but ‘provide only a framework for identifying and reflecting on
moral problems (emphasis mine).’3 This distinction anticipated what critics have seen as
the need for an ethical foundation upon which to construct such a schema. Typical
candidates include utilitarianism and Kantianism, though religious paradigms
sometimes merit perfunctory acknowledgement. Increasingly, however, it is a form of
scientism, imbued with convenient aspects of the aforementioned candidates, that
provides the cornerstone for a bioethical Tower of Babel. This biblical allusion is apt
for at least two reasons. First, it demonstrates the paucity of contemporary
interpretation, which is relevant to my broader argument. Both Wikipedia (a
collectively edited resource) and Britannica (the longest-running English-language
encyclopaedia) employ an illustratively “literal” reading, reducing the narrative to a
“myth” about the origins of divergent languages. I will return to the issue of literalism
below. The second reason for alluding to this ancient allegory is that a more traditional
reading forewarns of the dangers inherent to conceptual structures, especially those
constructed in a spiritually disordered fashion. The Babylonians wished to transcend
themselves by inappropriate means — a conceit which inevitably leads to collapse and
fractured identity. This is a predicament to which human projects are perpetually
vulnerable, and in this sense, the image of a tower is archetypal, symbolising the
tendency for our creations to become unmanageably complex, the distance between
foundation and summit increasing at the cost of integrity. Modern governments and
bureaucracies are fitting examples of the Babylonian narrative, yet the pattern is
relevant to all facets of human enterprise. It is interesting to note, for example, that
since the fifth edition of Principles of Biomedical Ethics, the chapters on moral theory
and moral justification that once enjoyed pride of place have been relegated to the back
of the book. The distance between foundation and summit has increased.

2
Tom Beauchamp & James Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics 5th ed., (New York: Oxford
University Press 2001), 15.
3
ibid.

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In a recent paper, bioethicist Jing-Bao Nie calls for new ethical visions that ‘reclaim,
reinterpret and revive old moral ideas and ideals rooted in different indigenous cultural
traditions.’4 I believe such revivification is a project of utmost urgency, especially in the
West, where the moral traditions stemming from Jerusalem and Athens are increasingly
forgotten — at least, outside of theology and philosophy departments. Such collective
amnesia should concern us. Philosopher Leo Strauss believed it was the oppositional
tension between the biblical revelation of the former and the philosophy of the latter
which constituted ‘the vitality of Western civilisation.’ 5 Aristotle’s concept of human
flourishing (eudaimonia), for example, understood as the ‘development of our
cognitive, affective, and social powers,’ is key to the bioethical notion of human
dignity, which I contend provides an important interpretational rubric for the four
principles.6 However, it is only once eudaimonia is embedded within the Judeo-
Christian notion that human beings are made in the image of God (imago Dei) that it
becomes firmly rooted in a coherent cosmogeny, connected to transcendent values such
as truth, beauty and goodness, and thus capable of reaching its fullest expression. In this
sense, Imago Dei can be construed as temporally and conceptually prior to the
Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia. Those who disagree with this assessment will
nevertheless concede that human beings do not exist, let alone flourish, in a vacuum. As
ethicist Charles Foster argues, we are embodied creatures, ‘we exist in a social, political
and physical environment,’ and any ‘sensible scheme of bioethics has to take this fully
into account.’7 Detractors unwilling to draw spiritual and intellectual nourishment from
the soil that produced us must turn to other sources.

One such alternative is scientism, a weed that has its roots at the end of the nineteenth
century when science once again began to challenge the traditional Christian
worldview. This period saw late-Victorian scientists reframe their method as ‘a whole
myth, a philosophical conception of the world and the forces within it, directly related
to the meaning of human life.’ 8 Following the advent of Darwinism, figures like

4
Jing-Bao Nie, ‘The Summit of a Moral Pilgrimage: Confucianism on Healthy Ageing and Social
Eldercare,’ Nursing Ethics 28, no. 3 (2021): 317-18.
5
John Ranieri, ‘Leo Strauss on Jerusalem and Athens: A Girardian Analysis,’ Shofar 22, no. 2 (2004):
85.
6
Richard Kraut, ‘Aristotle on Well-Being,’ The Routledge Handbook Of Philosophy Of Well-Being, ed.
Guy Fletcher, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 27.
7
Charles Foster, Human Dignity in Bioethics and Law, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2011), 12.
8
Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning (New York: Routledge, 1992),
52.

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Thomas Huxley championed science as an all-encompassing rubric through which one

could shape a spiritual life, ‘a faith by which people might live.’ 9 In Science as
Salvation, philosopher Mary Midgely suggests that any ‘system of thought playing the
huge part that science now plays in our lives must also shape our guiding myths and
colour our imaginations profoundly.’10 Science is not merely the technology it produces
or the means to procure material security; it is also a manner of perceiving the world as
well as shaping it. Today the West remains steeped in nineteenth-century positivism, its
hegemonic mode of thought content to reduce the entire spectrum of reality to the
strictly material, convinced that there is a “literal” interpretation for any given
phenomenon or narrative and that universal access to this hermeneutic is up for grabs if
only we would employ our powers of rationality. Though much fruit has been borne of
our capacity to investigate, interpret, and predict through a materialist lens, there are
limitations. Less evident from within the paradigm of scientific inquiry, these
limitations become glaring once its borders are traversed. On this score, Nie identifies
three major malaises, describing contemporary bioethics as rootless due to its
marginalisation of moral traditions, heartless in its emphasis on rationality, and soulless
owing to its dismissal of the existential and spiritual aspects of human experience.11

Nevertheless, the field of bioethics constitutes an attempt to answer the questions posed
by our reflections. Following the horrors of the twentieth century, which saw the
supremely immoral consequences of hyper-rational ideologies, the need to reaffirm and
enshrine ethical principles was widely recognised. In 1945, the Nuremberg trials saw
surviving Nazi leaders prosecuted under the newly established category of crimes
against humanity. Institutions, including the World Medical Association and the World
Health Organisation (WHO), sprang into being, proceeded by the Geneva Conventions
and later the Declaration of Helsinki — documents that hold the value of human life as
intrinsic and inalienable. While the blossoming of these institutions and accords is an
appropriate response to the abominations that led to their necessity, the basis for
recognising the value of human life is not self-evident.

9
ibid.
10
ibid, 1.
11
Nie, 317-18.

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Indeed, this problem was already anticipated at the end of the nineteenth century. In
1880, alluding to the Enlightenment’s rationalist enterprise, a character in Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s The Karamazov Brothers says: ‘Immortality of the soul does not exist,
therefore there is no virtue, therefore everything is permitted.’ 12 Two years later,
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously pronounced: ‘God is dead. God remains
dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort
ourselves?’13 Stripped of their ethical presuppositions, the cultures that emerged from a
Judeo-Christian foundation no longer made sense. New gods were required and soon
appointed, taking the forms of nationalism, fascism, Marxism, capitalism and scientism.
Indeed, in prophesying the ‘history of the next two centuries,’ Nietzsche added to this
list ‘the advent of nihilism,’ remarking that: 

our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured
tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a
river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect
(emphasis mine).14

After two World Wars and the tragedy entailed, it was clear that further failure to reflect
was not an option. Hence, our concerted efforts to correct the river’s course by
establishing ethically oriented international bodies and principles reaffirming the
sovereignty of the individual and the sanctity of human life.

In the case of the West, such attempts may signal that the fundamental tenets of our
moral traditions continue to inform our values and behaviour — even if we are
increasingly atheistic and even if our abstract concepts and narratives appear
iconoclastic. Alternatively, we may be witnessing a cut-flower phenomenon — a
culture removed from the soil that nourished it, beautiful for a time but destined to
wither. ‘What we possess, if this view is true,’ argues philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre,
‘are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from
which their significance derived.’ On this view, even the espousal of an intermediary

12
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers, trans. Ignat Avsey, (New York: Oxford University Press
Inc., 1994), 103.
13
Michael Ure, Nietzsche's The Gay Science: An Introduction, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2019), 123.
14
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, (New York:
Vintage Books, 1968), 3.

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framework such as the four principles amounts to a mere simulacrum. We have,

MacIntyre thinks, ‘lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of
morality.’15 This contention echoes that of psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Victor
Frankl, who suggests that the widespread phenomena of ‘depression, aggression and
addiction are not understandable unless we recognise the existential vacuum underlying
them (emphasis mine).’16 We find ourselves now in an absurd and unfortunate situation,
trapped in a hall of mirrors. For many, a return to the anachronistic notion that human
life — and by extension, human dignity — is intrinsically and religiously meaningful
seems untenable. And yet, if we are to learn from recent history, the alternative is
significantly worse. As Soviet dissident and writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn proposes: ‘If
a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by
the most perfect government structure or any industrial development.’ 17 This is a
warning from the rubble of a Babylonian tower.

The advent of and response to the COVID-19 pandemic across the West appears to
affirm Solzhenitsyn’s view and points to the cut-flower hypothesis. Though our
technical prowess proves increasingly formidable, demonstrated by the speed with
which vaccines were developed and disseminated, the manner in which we utilised the
tools at our disposal — our ethical wisdom — has proven less impressive. If the origins
of the virus remain unclear, conspiracy theories regarding the lab-leak hypothesis are at
least no longer groundless (pace Nie).18 Despite Dr Anthony Fauci’s repeated insistence
to the contrary, the US National Institutes of Health has admitted to funding gain-of-
function research. The EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based non-profit for the prevention of
pandemics run by Dr Peter Daszak, received ‘millions of dollars in grants by the US
federal government to research viruses for pandemic preparedness,’ of which
significant amounts were subcontracted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 19 Whether
consequently or not, few places on earth were immune to the effects of the outbreak.
And though there were differences in approach to dealing with the disease, there were
many similarities, especially in the West, where incestuous relationships between
15
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 2.
16
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press 1959), 107.
17
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia, trans. Alexis Klimoff, (London: Harvill, 1991), 44-5.
18
Jing-Bao Nie, ‘In the Shadow of Biological Warfare: Conspiracy Theories on the Origins of COVID-
19 and Enhancing Global Governance of Biosafety as a Matter of Urgency,’ Journal of Bioethical
Inquiry, 17, no. 4, (2020): 567-574
19
Paul Thacker, ‘Covid.19: Lancet Investigation into Origin of Pandemic Shuts Down over Bias Risk’
BMJ 375, no. 2414, (2021): 1.

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pharmaceutical companies, regulatory bodies and governments resulted in remarkably

homogenous responses notwithstanding pronounced differences in geography,
population demographics, and economies. Indeed, the authors of a recent British
Medical Journal article titled The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine bemoan a
scientific paradigm that ‘has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation,
and commercialisation of academia.’20 While communication between organs in a
healthy body politic is to be encouraged and facilitated, the degeneration of just one
element in a homeostatic system — let alone multiple — can compromise the whole.

In many instances, the West’s pandemic responses constituted egregious assaults on the
bioethical principles espoused by Beauchamp and Childress and were exercised under
the auspices of emergency use authorisations and state-of-emergency powers. Examples
include the introduction of vaccine mandates and passports, border closures, restrictions
on movement and gatherings, extended lockdowns, not to mention the direct and
ancillary effects on livelihoods. While advocates of such measures will argue that the
extent to which citizens’ rights and liberties were curtailed, denied and eroded was
necessary in light of the threat, many disagree. In October 2020, doctors Martin
Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya of Harvard, Oxford and Stanford
Universities, respectively, signed the Great Barrington Declaration: an open letter
expressing ‘grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of
the prevailing COVID-19 policies.’21 In line with findings from the WHO’s reports on
the 1918 influenza pandemic, which indicate that ‘social-distancing measures did not
stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission,’ a meta-analysis from Johns
Hopkins University concluded ‘that the average lockdown in Europe and the United
States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2%.’ 22 The study’s authors point out that
any benefits of lockdowns must also be weighed against reduced economic activity,
higher unemployment, diminished schooling, political unrest, increased domestic
violence, and the ‘undermining of liberal democracy.’ 23 Students have been deprived of
education. Women gave birth alone. People died in isolation. Bodily autonomy and
informed consent were abandoned for the false promise of safety. Much of this was
20
Jon Jureidini & Leemon B. McHenry, ‘The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine,’ BMJ 376, no. 702,
(2022): 1.
21
‘The Great Barrington Declaration,’ accessed 20. May 2022, https://gbdeclaration.org/
22
Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung & Steve H. Hanke, ‘A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects
of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,’ SAE, no.200 (2022), 40.
23
ibid,43.

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neither necessary nor sufficient. There is an abiding temptation for proponents of such
policies, no matter how disproportionate or dysfunctional, to say: “imagine how bad it
would have been if we hadn’t intervened.” However, such counter-factual sophistry can
be applied in both directions, and this paper is concerned with the fragility of the
current paradigm writ large.

A non-exhaustive list of current bioethical concerns might also consider the US opioid
crisis or the immoral activities of pharmaceutical companies more generally, including
the eye-watering fines paid by the likes of Pfizer (US$2.3 billion), GlaxoSmithKline
(US$3 billion), and Merck (US$1 billion) over safety concerns as well as civil and
criminal fraud.24 The encroachment of radical gender ideologies into the domains of
education, sport and medicine is also cause for unease. According to journalist Abigail
Shrier, there are phalanxes of young professionals now, many of them in teaching,
paediatrics or child psychiatry ‘who are open about their belief that their primary job is
“social justice” (emphasis mine).’25 In these instances, the four principles are
subordinated to an ideology that frames human experience as a zero-sum conflict
between oppressed and oppressor. A further consequence of this ideological possession
is that mental health issues, such as what public health researcher Lisa Littman calls
“rapid onset gender dysphoria,” are recast as political issues.26 Across the West, girls
are now the leading demographic proclaiming gender dysphoria — an alarming
turnaround in the century-long study of the condition. One statistic from the United
Kingdom’s national gender clinic reveals a 4,400% increase in the number of teenage
girls seeking treatment.27 Keira Bell, who underwent a double mastectomy at fifteen and
spent years taking puberty-blocking hormones, took the clinic to Court after realising
she was not suffering from gender dysphoria. Following an investigation into the
medical protocols applied in Bell’s case, the Court was aghast to discover that a child
had been allowed to consent to a process that eliminated her fertility and imperilled her
sexual function at an age when she was not competent to evaluate such loss.28

24

Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients, (London:
Fourth Estate, 2012), 274.
25
Abigail Shrier, ‘The Terror of Transitioning,’ USA Today 150, no. 2916 (2021): 11.
26
ibid.
27
ibid.
28
ibid.

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We have not yet had to endure the depth or scale of the horrors inflicted by Hitler or
Stalin and their ilk. Nevertheless, we remain within the frame of history that Nietzsche
prophesied. The relentless corrupting influence of the pseudo-religious aspects of
nationalism, fascism, Marxism, capitalism, and social justice are not bugs but features
of the hyper-rational, materialist, scientistic worldview that dominates the West. Such
moral perversions cannot be withstood from within a relativistic framework, leaving
Beauchamp and Childress’ bioethical principles open to dangerous interpretations that
fly in the face of the spirit intended. This observation is especially worrying considering
the all-too-recent course of human history. While the four principles offer a valuable
schema for the identification of bioethical issues and provide direction for the
normative guidelines informing our institutions, they nevertheless require a solid
grounding in the traditions that produced them. We may be experiencing the decline of
the current era. However, the wisdom contained in the biblical revelations of Jerusalem
and the teachings of Athens has survived the rise and fall of many epochs. Even wilting
flowers contain seeds. All they need to flourish are the right conditions.

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Bibliography

Beauchamp, Tom and Childress, James. Principles of Biomedical Ethics 5th edition. New York: Oxford University
Press 2001.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Karamazov Brothers, translated by Ignat Avsey. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.,
1994.

Foster, Charles. Human Dignity in Bioethics and Law. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2011.

Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press 1959.

Gillon, R. ‘Bioethics, Overview,’ edited by Chadwick, R. F. The concise encyclopedia of the ethics of new
technologies. San Diego, California: Academic Press, (2001): 1–12

Goldacre, Ben. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. London: Fourth Estate,
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‘The Great Barrington Declaration,’ accessed 20. May 2022, https://gbdeclaration.org/

Herby, Jonas; Jonung, Lars; Hanke, Steve H.. ‘A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns
on COVID-19 Mortality’ in SAE, no.200 (2022): 1-61.

Jon Jureidini & Leemon B. McHenry. ‘The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine’ in BMJ 376, no. 702, (2022): 1-2.

Kraut, Richard. ‘Aristotle on Well-Being’ in The Routledge Handbook Of Philosophy Of Well-Being, edited by Guy
Fletcher. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982.

Midgley, Mary. Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Nie, Jing-Bao. ‘In the Shadow of Biological Warfare: Conspiracy Theories on the Origins of COVID-19 and
Enhancing Global Governance of Biosafety as a Matter of Urgency’ in Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 17, no. 4,
(2020): 567-574.

Nie, Jing-Bao. ‘The Summit of a Moral Pilgrimage: Confucianism on Healthy Ageing and Social Eldercare’
in Nursing Ethics 28, no. 3 (May 2021): 316–26

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power, translated by Kaufmann, Walter and Hollingdale, R. J.. New York: Vintage
Books, 1968.

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Ranieri, John. ‘Leo Strauss on Jerusalem and Athens: A Girardian Analysis’ in Shofar 22, no. 2 (2004): 85–104.

Shrier, Abigail. ‘The Terror of Transitioning’ in USA Today 150, no. 2916 (09, 2021): 10-12.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr. Rebuilding Russia, translated by Alexis Klimoff. London: Harvill, 1991.

Thacker, Paul. ‘Covid.19: Lancet Investigation into Origin of Pandemic Shuts Down over Bias Risk’ in BMJ 375, no.
2414, (2021): 1.

Ure, Michael. Nietzsche's The Gay Science: An Introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

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