In this episode Courtney and Chris foolishly enter the Twitter bin-fire that is the Cancel Culture debate. However, rather than take sides they take the cowards option and discuss a few historical examples of bioethicists getting cancelled or at least attempts made to cancel them. Listen to hear discussions of trans-pacific evangelical politics, a modern-day King Herod, and the notorious after-birth abortion paper...(sheesh).
References
Music & Art
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
In this episode Courtney and Chris foolishly enter the Twitter bin-fire that is the Cancel Culture debate. However, rather than take sides they take the cowards option and discuss a few historical examples of bioethicists getting cancelled or at least attempts made to cancel them. Listen to hear discussions of trans-pacific evangelical politics, a modern-day King Herod, and the notorious after-birth abortion paper...(sheesh).
References
Music & Art
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Christopher Mayes: Welcome to undisciplinary a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
We are recording today on the unceded land of the Wathaurong and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and Melbourne.
My name is Chris Mayes and I'm joined by my co host Courtney Hempton, welcome.
Courtney Hempton: Hello. Thanks.
Christopher Mayes: And what are we going to be talking about today?
Courtney Hempton: Today we are talking about a brief history of bioethics and cancel culture. Which is making me feel very anxious just entering this this conversation.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah. ‘Cause it seems most people who see who wants to have something to say about this end up, you know, putting their foot in it, so to speak – Nick Cave, most recently, I would say.
Courtney Hempton: Yes. Um, yes, very unclear what he was trying to attempt to do and I am concerned that we might fall into the same camp, if not in all the ways maybe some of the ways.
Christopher Mayes: But yeah, I think sort of the cancelling or silencing of certain ideas or people who express those ideas, um, has been something that is part of a lot of different academic disciplines as well. I was thinking about, you know, we're going to focus on bioethics but anthropology is also something that has itself as a discipline, um attracted these certain kinds of debates, and I think that it has come, something comes down to, sort of, certain kinds of studies or descriptions of what it is to be human, what is normative within human practice and behaviour, and also different things that can be done. And I guess bioethics comes into that because it often um says, or purports to give certain ethical warrant to doing certain things to humans, or to not do certain things, or what can or shouldn't be promoted within so medical or scientific context. Um and so it gets to something about what it is to be human and human culture and interaction. I think it something that could explain partly why bioethics gets, finds itself surrounded and embroiled in a lot of cancel culture. It could also be that bioethics has a lot of particular personality types, that, or attracts them.
So we are not wanting to get into so much whether the ideas should or shouldn't be silenced or cancelled. So that's, that's not so much us wanting to take it back step away from the… well it is, we're wanting to take it back step from getting involved in cancel culture. But I think, in particular, it's something that's frustrated me in the conversations, they often don't use specific examples so it can often be fluctuating between something quite serious and, and, you know, socially significant and then in the same breath talk about something completely trivial.
Courtney Hempton: Yeah, and on the one hand, I was thinking about this in preparation for this conversation, but I also wonder are we even, with the examples that we're going to talk, are we even actually talking about cancel culture or are we just, are these more examples of instances in bioethics where there's been, you know, a significant kind of response or backlash I suppose to particular publications? I think there's been examples where this, I guess, be more of a call for someone to have their academic appointment revoked or a publication retracted. And maybe that kind of falls more into the cancel-y part of what we're talking about, um, yeah … I feel, similar to you in terms of having the frustrations coming to this conversation with frustrations about how this is normally discussed, but I feel perhaps also maybe reproducing some of those frustrations in terms of maybe not resolving either what cancel culture is, or who should be the arbiter of when it's appropriate when it's unwarranted.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, I mean, I think we're sort of going to, in the examples that we're going to discuss, I think that predate the term cancel culture. But I do think they reveal a certain dynamic that is occurring now, not the exact same one, but a certain kind of dynamic in the way a group will either say an individual or set of ideas are not appropriate to be expressed under these or in these certain circumstances or conditions.
So, how about we move on to the first example. I have been quite fascinated by this case and, maybe it comes into more of my own personal upbringing around and in evangelical communities but this one comes from a really interesting case, I think both in the history of bioethics, but in this idea of what kind of ideas can be expressed. So in 1982 it's a bit bit unclear, ’82 or ’83, Gareth Jones, who is currently at University of Otago, he's an anatomist, a professor and anatomy at University of Otago, and he just to give a bit more of his personal biography and professional history. He was part of the group that helped establish and found the Otago bioethics center. So that's his sort of current. sort of relevance to some of what we're looking about looking at and talking about, but Gareth Jones wrote in 1981, ‘82 in while he's in Perth at UWA, a book called Brave New People, which was him wanting to look at the way these new technologies, particularly in IVF, were raising all sorts of ethical questions, particularly for the Christian community of which he was part of.
But it was a book of bioethics that he got published with InterVarsity Press, which is an international Christian press that is particularly targeted at university students and the university level. So it's a general, it's for a general readership this press. This is an important I think to note, a general readership but also a sort of educated, university inquiring mind kind of readership. And it was published initially, through their UK office, but also through their US Office as well, which was based in Illinois. Now this book in it contained a chapter on therapeutic abortion, and I've interviewed Gareth and he, and I've read the chapter, I do my homework, listeners, and in this chapter, it’s a very, and then he admits himself, he has a very conservative take on abortion, that it's you know, primarily under circumstances when the health of the mother is threatened, and this is kind of a standard evangelical position on abortion in the early 80s and up to that point. And so he wrote this book at in Perth.
In the meantime, you got this position at Otago in New Zealand in Dunedin, and then, as he recounts himself in an article that I'll put up in the in the show notes, at 5am on Wednesday, the sixth of June 1984, he was woken by a telephone call. And it was the Editor from InterVarsity Press, calling to let him know that in the US there was an unfolding protest around the publication of this book, that they were getting hate mail and letters objecting to the press for publishing it and there was, apparently people were picketing outside the offices in Illinois, and there were open letters circulating within the American Evangelical Christian community calling out Gareth Jones with, you know, awful but some of the sort of usual sort of comparisons in these contexts to Hitler and, and that he was on his way to hell, and all this sort of stuff because one person in particular, Frankie Schaeffer, who I'll explain the significance of him in a second. He had been stirring up this idea that he was promoting abortion on demand, and that he could not really be called a Christian, let alone an evangelical Christian if he had these views on abortion and that InterVarsity Press should not publish this book, and that Frankie Schaeffer was going to mobilize the evangelical Christians to boycott both donating money to invest in the press, but also buying their publications.
Now, Frankie Schaeffer was the son of Francis Schaeffer who was a very significant figure in the establishment of the moral majority in the US. Francis Schaeffer was seen as this sort of intellectual driving force behind the moral majority in the late 70s and early 80s, particularly the support of the rise of Reagan and the politics surrounding end and beginning of life issues in the American context of that time, and Frankie Schaefer his son was the sort of air to that. Francis had just died and Frankie was sort of leading the charge in this new Moral Majority, I think Reagan was up for re election, and so they saw this book, as you know, they described it as a monstrous book. These are some of the quotes that I talked about, pure unregenerated existential humanism was another thing that was leveled at him, and an excellent example of justice perverted, God's law replaced by man's, and this call on that that Gareth Jones could not call himself a Evangelical Christian and that he was, he had jumped on a bandwagon bound for Hell was another quote. And he was like, like Hitler's eugenicist.
And so what's to me really interesting is that if you read the book and you read these chapters, it is pretty mild in terms of anything, you know, very conservative. Most people would read the book and think, oh, this is a very conservative take on abortion and end of life issues, yet it generated this very vicious response, such that InterVarsity Press pulled the book from publication. And it was the first book in its I think 50 year history that had ever been pulled from publication, and a second edition came out with Eerdmsan shortly after, another Christian publisher, where he has a preface where he's talking about some of this and makes, sort of addresses the issues a bit more carefully in his, his mind.
But yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of different dynamics going on in that story. That talk a little bit to some of these issues of cancelling and who can speak and who can't speak and why certain issues are silenced. I mean, one of the things that strikes me in particular is that Gareth Jones, no offense, Gareth, but in its many respects was sort of a bit of a nobody in that context, like it's not like he was a big name. And so it's quite interesting that this sort of nobody who's on quite literally on the other side of the earth writing a book about these issues was treated with such hostility.
Courtney Hempton: Yeah, I feel like my initial thinking, not knowing that that history. Um, I guess one thing that I immediately think of is how different would that play out, if that was in a contemporary context where, you know, Gareth Jones was on Twitter, or the press was on Twitter and how that amplifies things in different ways. But I thought, I guess my initial interest was that I guess who the response was coming from, like it but it was coming for, I guess, within if I'm remembering this correctly within a Christian or within an evangelical kind of community. So I guess it was more like, this is what someone from within our community is saying we kind of find that abhorrent for, for whatever reason, so I think that kind of identity aspect is interesting.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, I think it's really interesting being and I think will play out when we talk about some of the other cases, after this one. But yeah, because I think here it's primarily, not only just a Christian community, but an evangelical Christian community and it's about who can lay claim to an evangelical position on abortion. And this was the time when you know the moral majority was still trying to appeal Roe v. Wade, but we're feeling that this was very much going to be a short lived policy or law, and seeing, I think Reagan was up for re election. And so I think they were wanting to make sure that there was a very strong and clear united front within evangelical Moral Majority community in the US, that they saw this, I guess, as a threat to undermine, and what I think is interesting is that evangelicals in the UK didn't care about this at all, and in New Zealand and in Australia there was no negative response to Gareth Jones's book at all.
And then I think the further dimension to that to this point about who's doing the cancelling and for what purposes, is that Gareth Jones, you know, he wasn't a Minister or attached to a particular church in the sense of being employed as that's his main role. When I interviewed him and asked him, you know, what did the Vice Chancellor of the University of Otago think because this all happened when he was at Otago, and they were firstly pretty much unaware that this was all going on and were basically well if it doesn't affect your job, what you're supposed to be doing here as a professor in anatomy, which they didn't think it did, but they were just more bemused as to what was going on and, and were just like, well hope that all works out for you Gareth. Seemed to be the general response, so I think that's something else that's interesting, both in this example and some that will talk about afterwards as well, are the way people can be between different communities or or different scholar, yeah different yeah different communities, I think. And that one community may be trying to cancel them, but another community may not care and may even embrace them even more because of the potential cancellation.
Courtney Hempton: Yes. Yes, definitely. One of the things I yeah I'm thinking about more broadly cancellation within, or cancel culture within by bioethics and some of the examples we’re going to talk about is, I guess, yeah, who is served by, not necessarily people. I don't think maybe people are trying to be cancelled in a more deliberate sense, but I guess, what is the ways in which, particularly in the current climate, you might be able to anticipate that there would be a negative response to, for example, publishing a certain paper. And how that might actually operate in, you know, the interest of a journal in terms of generating, you know readership and response or notoriety for kind of being, being a place where, you know, kind of controversial ideas are discussed.
Christopher Mayes: Well, and that's the interesting thing. I think with this, this first case is how he was completely blindsided and also not, you know, for talking about something that was pretty much established orthodoxy in terms of the views on abortion within that particular community but, he I think in in it being published in the US it took on a very different meaning in a very different political and social and theological context to what it was in Australia and New Zealand or the UK.
So another, or another set of examples really I think when it comes to bioethics and controversy is a set of papers that really span a 40 plus year history around particularly infanticide. In 1972 Michael Tooley a philosopher from the US, who then also had some time at the University of Western Australia, wrote a paper on abortion and infanticide, and then re wrote different versions of that paper for a number of years under different titles, arguing the case for infanticide. And this is, you know, in most sort of anthologies of bioethics, this is a pretty standard text and I'm pretty standard argument. And so it's interesting that this was similar a little bit earlier to Gareth Jones, and the controversy surrounding him, but in a different way.
So this one, when Michael Tooley was appointed a position at University of Western Australia there was some mild protest around that appointment, but interestingly came from one or two figures within the university. So there was a professor of philosophy called Julius Kavasey[CH1] , who was not keen on Tooley’s appointment, and referred to Tooley sorry as being King Herod. But that was really about it from in terms of, you know, there was no picketing and no widespread discussion in the newspapers. I think there was some protest that idea by the members, some members of the Catholic Church in Perth. But yeah, not, not a lot.
Courtney Hempton: Yeah. I feel like I'm much less familiar around the history in terms of what the response was to the Tooley paper, but certainly when you study bioethics and most of the papers that people, the other examples that we talk about are papers that are discussing, as you said infanticide or after-birth abortion, that all kind of stem from, seem to kind of reference and stem from this kind of initial argument that was posed by Tooley, so I feel like it has this legacy, in that sense.
Christopher Mayes: The interesting thing in talking with Tooley about this as well and this is similar to what I was talking about with Gareth Jones, is because a lot of Tooley’s philosophy, he sort of wrote that paper and then I think he has a book on abortion and infanticide as wel,l but that was early on in his career, and then he does a lot of other stuff in epistemology, and you know philosophy of knowledge and mind and those sorts of things. Which seem to be where he got his other positions subsequently, so it's not, so it's interesting, again to think of like with Gareth Jones has been, you know, professor of anatomy and then writing this bioethics thing on the side. Um, Tooley similarly sort of was doing some stuff on ethics, but his main focus was on epistemology and other areas.
But I find that interesting as well. Again, maybe this is sort of smaller cultures or sub fields within philosophy, but it also seemed to be something that was able to be bracketed off any kind of controversy or, it didn't attach to him in the same way that it could attach to somebody who solely was just working in bioethics or solely just working in applied ethics, like this is your thing your thing is infanticide. Well, we were not really that interested in infanticide. So we don't want to employ you in this philosophy department.
Courtney Hempton: I feel, also, that raises interesting like whether it's the cancellation, or kind of response, whether it's about the actual work or the person doing the work. So I feel like whether its, one aspect that seems to come into a lot of the cancel culture is it's about, it becomes about more about the person who's written the work, which I think picks up on perhaps the point that you're making around, you know how much impact it might have on someone's career or employability. How much that work at separated from them as an academic, as opposed to, yeah, it's really kind of attached to them in a way that might be more harmful.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah. Well, I mean,
Courtney Hempton: Sorry, I'm thinking through this while I'm speaking
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, so with Michael Tooley, I don't think that it really impacted his career, he left UWA from a tenured position to go to ANU to a less secure research only position due to frustrations with his job at UWA, but nothing at all to do with being pushed out. So yeah. The other thing with Julius Kavasey, [CH2] he asked, the one who sort of objected to his initial appointment, he asked for an office on the other side of the building cecause he didn't want to be near him, but that seemed to be the only kind of negative impact, at least in that initial context.
It is interesting that it was only, and again, this comes back to, I guess, issues of communication speed and those sorts of things, and circulation of ideas, it was only I think in 1997 after Tooley had left ANU and gone back to the US and was working at the University of Colorado, that these ideas became widely known to people beyond academia when Steven Pinker, the silver mane-ed lion of The Enlightenment wrote in 1997 an article ‘Why they kill their newborns;, in which he quotes Tooley, and then Tooley said that he did gets some mild sort of blowback and a few sort of nasty letters, maybe a death threa,t when he was at the University of Colorado, but that was only because Pinker had written this article in the New York Times, and had that never happened, then people probably would have been completely unaware that he, and when I say people I mean people outside of moral philosophy, bioethics would have been not aware that he had written these things on infanticide.
Courtney Hempton: Yes, I think that seems to be the kind of contemporary shift right is that things, you know, if the time I had disagreed with that I could have written, you know, an article within academia to kind of debate, the ideas or, you know, written a bad review of his book or something. Whereas I feel like, yeah, yhings seem to escalate once things are kind of these instances are kind of picked up and kind of, I guess, more mainstream media, which seems to happen more, you know, in the more recent examples.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, and I think that, and that's sort of moving on to the next example then of Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse, with their book from 1985 Should the Baby Live, I think, again, we're seeing a different shift, both in who the intended audiences are for these things. So that was written, I’ve forgotten who published that, but it was published in a trade paperback or something that was you know, written for a educated audience, but maybe a bit like Gareth Jones’ book was also something that students and interested people, it wasn't written just for philosophers, which I guess which is what Tooley’s paper was written for moral philosophers, whereas Should the Baby Live was not only written in a more accessible context but, you know the newspaper articles, at the time, popular newspapers Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, were running stories on it. The Monash Reporter, the sort of Monash newspaper also reported on it. And interestingly, just in a oh by the by, Singer and Kuhse have written this book on Should the baby live, and wasn't seemingly met with any kind of protest or outrage at least immediately within this country, this country being Australia, just in case people weren't aware where we're speaking to you from.
Courtney Hempton: very ambiguous accents.
Christopher Mayes: That’s right. Yeah, so I think, I mean there wasn',t there wasn’t certainly in 1985, outcry and critical responses to this. So there were articles in those publications like The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald following it, following its publication that were critical of it. So, for instance, in February 1996 there's an article about Helga Kuhse: author defends book which advocates baby euthanasia, in which it's sort of, Helga’s being criticized for, primarily primarily not caring significantly for the, for people with disabilities and is also being attacked by the right to life movement and Nicholas Tonti-Filippini is quoted in there, and, you know, suggesting that Kuhse and Singer are, you know, deciding who should live in who should die and what life is worth living, and all of those sorts of usual criticism. So it was certainly critique, but it seems that it took form in newspaper back and forth. So then the Singer would write a commentary saying why that person, you know, who was criticizing their paper why they were wrong. It's quite interesting that there was quite a lot of back and forth going on in the newspapers at that time around these particular issues, including getting doctors perspectives on on this as well as, as well as some parents
But there was also international outrage to, primarily Peter Singer, but also Helga Kuhse, around this and other issues.
Courtney Hempton: Yeah, I think one thing that I just remembered is also is that, um, I guess the career stage, so Helga Kuhse, I believe when that was first published was hadn't finished her PhD yet at that time, or was just, maybe just finished her PhD, and that's also really interesting in terms of, I guess, being kind of catapulted into a world, onto the world stage in terms of perhaps writing something that's, that did kind of go beyond academia, in terms of the attention that was received. But yes, and certainly that kind of, I guess, led to, you know, for example, I think it was in 1989 that there were protests against Peter Singer’s planned talk in Germany that I think was related to either that book or subsequent paper on a similar kind of infanticide, euthanasia context.
Christopher Mayes: And yeah, so he was then followed with protest. And interestingly, even before 1985, he had, there were people who were unhappy with his views on animals and experimentation on animals, such that part of the reason why the Monash Bioethics Centre was initially called the Human Bioethics Centre was the medical and science faculties, who were involved in the co-creation of that Centre, they were quite keen that it have human in the title to ensure that it wasn't going to be mixed up with any of Peter Singer’s other work in relation to animal liberation. So I think it is interesting, with his career, he has courted and attracted, someone say provoked controversy on a range of issues. Such that, then, as we've sort of opened with this episode, the protests around his appointment and position at Princeton University from disability activists were not keen, and still are not particularly keen on his views and his role and being given a a Chair in ethics at Princeton University.
But yeah, so with with Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse’s Should The Baby Live and subsequent controversies surrounding I guess the general argument that Singer in particular has unfolded in different books since the 1980s around the ethical permissability of infanticide, there have been rolling debates and protests around him and his work. Most recently, just before the COVID shutting us all down in New Zealand. There was some protests around him speaking, I think for the Think Inc Group.
Courtney Hempton: Yes, I was just looking so it was actually it was cancelled by the venue, in response to protests. Oh my goodness, I'm just going to pop up ad so I can't read what I was reading, ugh media. So, the venue Sky City their comment was, “While Sky sity supports the right of free speech, some of the themes provided by the Speaker to not reflect our values of diversity and inclusivity”. So that was an article in The Guardian. And then I think he was picked up by another venue. So the talk was going to go ahead somewhere else, but ut then did not because of the pandemic, etc. But I think that's just it gets let's who's um, I guess in the kind of current context of I guess, corporate responsibility the broader impact of, of protests or calls for boycotts, and how that might look different in, you know, for example, what seems to be a corporate venue, rather than if that was a talk at a university that might have perhaps played out differently.
Christopher Mayes: Well, they have different norms and values. Yeah. And I think that that's a really interesting dimension to, I think what we're trying to do here is outline what could be called like an infrastructure of cancellation or otherwise. And I think that that has shifted so much over time. So that, yeah, Singer in New Zealand being cancelled, his event gets cancelled due to corporate interests. And they say, well, this has got nothing to do with free speech. This is just got to do with, basically us wanting to appease our consumers or potential consumers. Whereas yeah if that's occurring in a university context or with the University Press, etc. I mean, you saw a part of that. I guess with InterVarsity Press’ decision to pull Gareth Jones’ book, was seemingly based on political and economic considerations as opposed to whether or not they agreed with his view. But yeah, so much of the way things are communicated, both in the physical context, whether it's an amphitheatre, or in the way that distributed, whether it's through social media has changed and accelerated certain dimensions of so called cancel culture.
Courtney Hempton: Yes, I think also, yeah, I feel like makes me think about well, who, if as an academic, if you were to say something that might fall into this category of being considered controversial, who can you expect to wupport your defend your right to say that, excuse me, whether or not they actually agree with what you're saying. Um, yeah, I think that's has played out in interesting ways in terms of, for example particularly journals and editorial teams either kind of coming up very strongly in defence of having published something that was then considered controversial, or or remain silent, I think has been the case in at least one particular instance.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, well, how about you introduce the next one. To the astute listener. You may know what's coming.
Courtney Hempton: So I guess the first more recent paper that we're thinking of is was published in 2013 in the Journal of Medical Ethics by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, and that was ‘After birth abortion: Why should the baby live.’
Christopher Mayes: Dun, dun, dun.
Courtney Hempton: Um, I feel like the timing of this was also when I was just beginning to study bioethics. This is, I guess my first awareness of, while I was just figuring out what bioethics was and what happens within kind of bioethical spheres that this kind of, I guess, I had a peripheral understanding of this happening at the time, but it was probably only a few years later that I, I guess, have a bigger sense of I guess how big of an issue this seemed to be. But again, that was maybe, yeah, whether it was just a big issue in small little bioethical communities or spheres, or whether it kind of did go beyond that. Um, but certainly, this was a paper that generated significant response, I would say. So both online in terms of people criticizing the paper and I guess criticizing the authors specifically as opposed to perhaps the paper…
Christopher Mayes: I mean, the discourse has discourse on this, there is so much, so much has been written about this, it does feel like it's that kind of paper that people, many people in bioethics don't even really want to talk about. So why are we talking about it.
Courtney Hempton: Are we trying to get cancelled, I don’t really know. I mean, I felt in terms of, it was a to me a very obvious inclusion in terms of, you know, a discussion of cancel culture in in bioethics. I mean certainly that was, I guess, immediately there was kind of response online. The Journal of Medical Ethics also has a blog, so it's kind of, I guess more immediately than there was in terms of an actual follow up journal issue, that was kind of blog commentary around the paper. So the editor Julian Savulescu wrote a blog defending the publication of the paper, Giubilini and Minerva also wrote a blog defending their, I guess wanting to clarify the intent of, of their purpose in writing the paper and who the paper was intended for, and then I believe there's an entire special issue of Monash Bioethics Review that kind of brought together some of these responses. So yes, I feel like it's kind of generated this huge discourse within bioethics and I guess medical ethics, perhaps more broadly in terms of people both defending the ideas, defending the rights, if not defending the ideas then defending the right for the ideas to be spoken and argued, the right for that to be published. And I guess the kind of opposite of that, and calling for, I presume people call retraction, I didn't actually see that in in anything that I was looking at was more, I guess, personal attacks and death threats against the author, but I seem to stumble across in the dark corners.
Christopher Mayes: Minerva wrote a piece the journal of Bioethics on which there was a discussion or which centred around academic freedom and whether their academic freedom was being curtailed which, yeah, I felt that that was one of the weaker responses to suggest that this was an issue of academic freedom. And we can get into that in a moment.
But I thought and maybe it's far too late in the peace, but maybe some people don't know what we’re talking about, in relation to infanticide and after birth abortion, but basically this paper after birth abortion. You know, and part of their defence, which I find really kind of funny as well is, we are just writing a 40 year update an extension of Michael Tooley’s paper from 1972. So on the one hand, the saying there's nothing new here, which would then raise the question as to why is it being published if there's nothing new there, but the newness I guess of what they were trying to say is that both Tooley and Singer and Kuhse were arguing that infanticide is permissible under the conditions where a child is born with significant disabilities, such that that child's life was not going to be worth living for the child itself, but that also for the parents and society more broadly. And so saying under those conditions that should be permissible to euthanise the infant
And Giubilini and Minerva were saying, well, if we're going to base this on an idea of personhood. So, this this infant that's born, as Singer has said, based on you know some kinds of neuroscience, we can say that infant up until let's say the age of a month, that's what Singer said, does not have the cognitive capacity for self-awareness and personhood, therefore, it is not a moral agent and the no moral harm is done to it, if it is euthanised. Giubilini and Minerva then sort of say, well, if that's the case for an infant with a disability, then surely an infant without a disability also is, it's permissible to euthanise that infant. So they they extended it from disability, an infant with disability, to just any infant, it would be morally permissible.
Courtney Hempton: Um, yeah. And I thought, one of the things I thought was really interesting in their, the open letter that they had published on the JME blog. the kind of, the opening sentence is, “When we decided to write this article about after birth abortion we had no idea that our paper would raise such a heated debate.” Um, yeah, and I think, I mean, we will put up a link to lots of the things we've been speaking about including this letter, just because I found it was interesting in terms of I guess the explanation that was was given. And I guess the clarification, and they go on to say that “this article was supposed to be read by other fellow bioethicists who already familiar with this topic and our arguments”, and they go on to say “it was just meant to be a pure exercise of logic, if x, then y”. And so I feel. Yeah, I don't, without I guess piling on, the criticism that was leveraged against them does seem, you know, this was 2012, whether that was perhaps a naïve position or, um, or if it just is, iss this a problem of bioethics, ethics, that we, we want to remain, both remain in our little bubble and kind of talk bioethics to other bioethicists and kind of just push boundaries, kind of follow the logic in a utilitarian kind of way, um…
Christopher Mayes: Well, I mean, I think that's where the lead Singer, to his credit was aware that he was doing both that he was, you know, in his in his approach he believed he was following the logic and a utilitarian way and was aware that he was having a conversation that lots of other people were listening in on a little bit like this.
Courtney Hempton: What people are listening to this?
Christopher Mayes: Whereas I think this idea that bioethicists, you know bioethicist aren't even from the very beginning of this thing called bioethics were always a interdisciplinary ensemble, that also included members of the public. I mean, the whole part of the, the narrative of bioethics was it taking what was happening in medical research and medical practice away from doctors and the privilege purview of doctors to have a more open community awareness of what was going on, and then a belief that now bioethics somehow to be considered like particle physicists and just operating on their own in some obscure part of the university protected by these norms of freedom of investigation and research and speech. Believing that a conversation can just take place between them. When it's been sent out by press releases and, and addressing issues that are of, and again, this comes back to those early conversations I think bioethics and things like anthropology addressing these sort of fundamental questions as to, you know, what is it to be part of the human community. Or more broadly, what is it to be part of a community where you valued or not valued whether you can be killed or not killed. You know the biopolitical domain. So that, you know, including animals or, or and other beings and entities. And I think, yeah, this idea that bioethics is just for bioethicists and not part of and deeply entrenched in societies and communities is very antiquated. And because bioethics didn't exist in antiquity, the idea of it just makes no sense.
Courtney Hempton: Um, yeah. And I felt like both also, as you kind of mentioned, you know, we live in an era of, you know University Press releases kind of promoting academic publications and I do, I feel like you also have to be aware of the fact that, and this seems to happen quite a lot, particularly in science, so I feel bioethics and philosophy should be no exception, that kind of press releases might overhype what is actually the content of an article that I feel like that seems to have happened in this case, in terms of presenting what, or perhaps misrepresenting the actual arguments that that were made in the paper to an extent. But I do feel like the, and certainly, and I think they say in their letter, they weren't they weren't writing in a law policy space in terms of arguing that this, this should be now the law or that policy should change. But I also, in the absence of, um, yeah, I guess, I guess, to me, I kind of want to question, well, then, what does, is it just kind of a thought exercise?
Christopher Mayes: And to get back to this sort of conditions of the cancel culture in this particular context and the consequences of it. I mean, if they as well were early career researchers at the time, so young researchers who sort of made a name for themselves quite early on, but from what I can tell, at least from the internet like both have positions or fellowships at the moment. I mean, the whole university sector is precarious so no doubt there is still precarity it in their employment, but it doesn't seem again that they have been cancelled, but arguably have been embraced by a particular cultural community, that does feel these sorts of brave, utilitarian logical arguments are worth making and that and that if those people are willing to make them then they're embraced by that community.
Courtney Hempton: Yes. And, I mean certainly, you know, Francesca Minerva is now one of the editors of the new Journal of Controversial Ideas. So I guess certainly kind of followed, so the Journal of Controversial Ideas enables authors to publish anonymously, I mean I'm just presuming that is in response to some of the personal attacks and criticism that she received, and potentially perceived challenges around employment, etc, on the back of writing about controversial things.
Christopher Mayes: Just as a sort of wrapping it up. What does this sort of recent history of bioethics, I guess what does it teach us or what sort of light does it shed, at least on the cancel, the culture of cancel culture in this particular context?
Courtney Hempton: I feel like I'm a bit torn on what lesson to take away in terms of, would my career, be better served if I write something like just extremely controversial that got a heap of media attention, presumably, also some death and, you know, kind of very gendered rape threats or something. But it might also make me a more attractive employee in some circles of the world, um.
I feel like my sense is that in another, whether it's a you know, five years or 10 years that we, the next paper particularly thinking about this sort of infanticide, and after birth abortion, there'll be the kind of next iteration of whether it's the next taking it one more logical step further or kind of revisiting the history and, I don't know. I don't know what particular lesson or learnings…
Christopher Mayes: Don’t use that word.
Courtney Hempton: That was just for you.
Christopher Mayes: I guess what I mean I think what's interesting. So going back to the Gareth Jones, one that was a community within a society, so the evangelical and even really a community within a community of the American evangelicalism, what ideas can be expressed, what's orthodoxy within this community, and we're going to not allow any alternative perspective or any debate about that alternative perspective, because we need to shore up this, and even though we don't know who this guy Gareth Jones is because one of our publishing houses as published it, we've got to send a signal and a message to everyone else, such that now it is orthodoxy among American evangelicals really this very hyper-conservative view on abortion that even under conditions of threat to the mother's life for, you know, severe disabilities, well not even severe, you know conditions, such that threatens the conditions of life post-birth and not even taken into consideration and any sort of gray area is seen as being soft, and maybe you're not really a evangelical not really a Christian. So in that context, it was sort of what's appropriate in or what's allowed and what's permissible in this very small subset so that I don't think that I really cared. You know, they were certainly weren't lobbying University of Otago to say that Gareth Jones holds views that are unacceptable for someone working in a university. They were just like he doesn't hold views that is acceptable for somebody who's part of American evangelicalism.
Whereas then moving into, say the Tooley context, it's more about what views are appropriate within say a philosophy department, and what kind of colleague, do we want so Julius Kavasey [CH3] didn't clearly want to have Michael Tooley as a colleague, or have those sorts of ideas expressed in that context.
And then with Singer and Kuhse sort of brought out more generally to what kind of ideas can be expressed in society. And then that sort of really gets ramped up I think with Giubilini and Minerva that, should we even be able to air these ideas in quote unquote civil society. And that seems to be at least one of the dimensions that, or the terrains over which these debates are being had.
But I think what's also quite prevalent, and I think the importance of the, you know the Disability Studies and the disability activists critique of a lot of this is the absolute, you know, only in protest that a lot of these disability activists voices and positions were being heard on these debates. So I think that's something we haven't really addressed is, a lot of these people talking about the freedom to express their ideas, but not acknowledging that they’re expressing their ideas with significant infrastructural support and social capital as academics in prestigious journals being interviewed by prestigious and widely circulated newspapers, while the people who are sort of subject to their ideas, people living with disabilities and caring for people with disabilities, are occasionally given platform next to them, but often not and particularly in the early days, you know, sort of secondary way.
Well, thanks a lot for listening to this episode, and you can tweet or email a comment or a question to us, if you've got any death threats you'd like to send you can send them to undisciplinarypod@gmail.com or just straight up tweet us, and tag in our employers.
Courtney Hempton: Yes, I feel like I don't even want to publicise that we're on Twitter at Undisciplinary underscore (@Undisciplinary_) and our website is Undisciplinary.org
Christopher Mayes: Thank you very much.
Courtney Hempton: Thanks.
…
Christopher Mayes: It just doesn't seem that is the end of the story. I can't think of many people who are just like cancelled, and we never hear of them.
Courtney Hempton: Or are people kind of just being silently…
Christopher Mayes: exterminated?
Courtney Hempton: Yeah.