The American Journal of Bioethics

Catherine Myser's arresting polemic, "Differences from Somewhere: The Normativity of Whiteness in Bioethics in the United States" (2003), aims at laudable goals, such as "engag[ing] equal collaborators from a broader range of voices." However, the analysis is methodologically flawed, and the proposed "problematization" of "whiteness" is more likely to balkanize bioethics than to encourage collaboration. These points will be considered in turn, starting with the methodological issues.

Attributing values and cognitive characteristics to ethnic groups and fields requires a sophisticated methodology if it is to amount to something more than merely reifying stereotypes (Baker 1999). Myser does not discuss methodology. Instead, readers are presented with comparative tables. One table lists terms that sociologist Renee Fox (1990) uses to characterize the values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics of mainstream American bioethics. The other table lists similar terms used in "British Families" (McGill and Pearce 1982) to characterize white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Coincidences between labels in both tables are taken to "show that ... values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics of 'American' bioethics clearly, indeed resoundingly, echo WASP values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics."¹ This methodology is suspect, but I shall let others challenge it. Suppose, for the sake of analysis, that these are valid categories, that the labels in both lists have the same meaning, and that they were, and remain, accurate indices of the values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics of the field and the group in question; it follows that values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics can be shared. In the case in point, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and American bioethicists are said to share values and so forth.

The significance of sharing values becomes evident if we consider the role played by American Catholics in the creation of bioethics. The most prominent Catholic family in the United States, the Kennedy family, supported influential conferences, projects and institutes—including the Kennedy Center for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics, later renamed the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. One family member actually coined the term bioethics, in the sense that it is currently used (Jonsen 1998, 27). Moreover, American Catholics of Dutch, German, Irish, and Italian heritage—Daniel Callahan (cofounder of the Hastings Center, the first bioethics institute), H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., André Hellegers, Albert Jonsen, Edmund Pellegrino, David Thomasma, and Warren Reich—played a pivotal role in founding American bioethics. Given the prominence of Catholics in founding American bioethics, unless Myser challenges the received understanding of the history of bioethics, Myser must either abandon the view that the values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics of mainstream American bioethics are white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or Myser must accept that such values could be shared by American Catholics. Consequently, the values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics that Myser attributes to mainstream American bioethics—individualism, autonomy, rights, veracity, beneficence, justice, antipaternalism, and so forth—could be shared by Americans of many different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

If this is so, the question naturally arises: do the three groups that Myser identifies as "other"—African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans—or some subset of these groups, share some or all of the values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics attributed to American bioethics? Myser is silent on this subject. No evidence is adduced showing that African Americans, Asian Americans or Native Americans are "other" in the sense that they do not value individualism, autonomy, rights, veracity, beneficence, justice, antipaternalism, or the other values, concepts, and cognitive frameworks attributed to mainstream American bioethics. Some of these groups, or some subset of these groups, may not accept some or even all of these, but, to reiterate, no evidence is adduced on this point. It is simply presumed that these groups are "other." This presumption begs the central question posed by the polemic. For, insofar as the values, concepts, and cognitive characteristics of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are not "other," insofar as they are shared with mainstream American bioethics, there is no problem of difference to be addressed. Hence there is no need to resolve this problem by...