People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak.

[Cloning] can't make you immortal because clearly the clone is a different person. If I take twins and shoot one of them, it will be faint consolation to the dead one that the other one is still running around, even though they are genetically identical. So the road to immortality is not through cloning.

There has never been just 'coach class' health care, but with these amenities you are seeing people get priorities according to your ability to pay. It's one thing to say you get perks; it's another to say you can buy your way to the head of the line.

With terminal illness, your fate is sealed. Morally, we're more comfortable with a situation where you don't cause death, but you hasten it. We think that's a bright line. Comparing the U.S. with Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal for patients suffering 'intolerable health problems.'

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are-not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage. ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes.

Bodies aren't the same as Coca-Cola cans.

People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak.