Author: Alessandro Blasimme
Position: PhD student
Institution: European School of Molecular Medicine & University of Milan
E-mail: alessandro.blasimme@ifom-ieo-campus.it
Additional Authors: Paolo Maugeri, Silvia Camporesi
Submitted Date: March 20, 2009
Published Date: March 26, 2009
This comment was originally posted as a “Reader Response” on the publication date indicated above. All Reader Responses are now available as comments.

A proactive ethical analysis, like the one offered by the authors, can be useful in pointing out the possible topics of future disagreements. Nevertheless, the specific version of common morality adopted by the authors is not the correct tool to anticipate possible ethical and policy issues. The authors should have spelled out which notion of common morality they are implicitly referring to. Common morality refers to some set of moral beliefs or rules that are held by a large number of people. Those beliefs can be taken into account in a moral argument either in a descriptive or in a prescriptive way. They can be conceived of as historically determined or as an a-historical, and thus unchangeable, core of human morality. Common morality can, lastly, be universal or group-specific [1,2].
Referring to opinion surveys as the raw material to extrapolate their recommendations, the authors are adopting a descriptive, group-specific and historical version of common morality. The outcome of the polls turns out to coincide with the opinion of the US citizens who answered them, which may reflect to a certain extent their common morality, but not necessarily so.
Then, the authors derive from the collected data prescriptive norms and practical recommendations. By so doing, they are committing three fallacies:
a) They use a specific version of descriptive common morality to derive prescriptive norms. Instead, common morality could inform prescriptive ethics only provided that a rational justification is given as to why we have a moral reason to adopt the specific points of view extrapolated from the polls [1,3].
b) They take opinion surveys to be neutral. It is an established philosophical that theories and norms guiding the experimental design inevitably shape the interpretation of the empirical data later collected. The kinds of questions we pose, the methods we use for creating groups and categories as well as the explanatory framework under which data are interpreted, inform the observational outcome. Empirical findings are never available in a form both theoretically and normatively neutral.
c) They conflate moral issues with policy issues. The discussion of the former does not entail that we take a stance on the latter. Such an approach would unduly restrict the array of future regulatory possibility. Moreover, future policy guidelines cannot be derived from a descriptive kind of common morality with no particular justification to be prescriptive.
To summarize, the paper usefully points out possible problematic issues. However, it wrongly tries to reconcile them by an alleged notion of common morality.
On the contrary, the future regulation of research could be better framed by spelling out possible topics of the debate as well as the kinds of moral resources we wish to apply. As to the former, these should at least include: scrutiny of regenerative therapies using iPS-derived cells and of treatments that could count as human enhancements; the use of artificial gametes and their implication for human reproduction [4]. As to the latter, we propose to spell out the categories we are employing in ethical reasoning. We could adopt a principled bioethics [5], a version of virtue ethics or discuss ethical issues in terms of human rights. A proactive analysis such as the one envisaged by the authors must take into account all of these levels. A premature ruling out of one of these will lead to an impoverishment of the discussion when the issues actually arise and policy decisions must be taken.
References
1.Wallace KA, Common morality and moral reform, Theor Med Bioeth 2009, 30:55-68.
2.Strong C, Exploring questions about common morality, Theor Med Bioeth 2009, 30:1-9.
3.Gert B, Morality: Its nature and justification, New York: Oxford University Press 2005.
4.Testa G & Harris J, Ethics and synthetic gametes Bioethics 2005,19:146-166.
5.Beauchamp TM, Childress JF, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Oxford University Press, NY 2008.