Hi there,

I suspect that people who use the expressing “I’m feeling conflicted” are mostly American, so I avoid it. However, when discussing slippery slopes, synonyms like doubtful, faltering, irresolute, undecided, or wobbly don’t do the job. I am conflicted.

The slippery slope is derided as a logical fallacy, which it would be if it describes necessary consequences. But it seems to describe a reality if we take into account lawyers’ searching for loopholes or bioethicists searching to push back the frontiers of repugnance.

One example of this in this week’s newsletter is Switzerland’s famous assisted suicide law. Apparently this was first proposed almost a hundred years ago to help a few victims of unrequited love and wounded honour. It was only in the 80s that the cobwebbed loophole was discovered by right-to-die groups. Since then hundreds have died. Isn’t that a slippery slope?

Perhaps a century is too gradual to be called a slope. I spotted a swifter version in a startling article in the Journal of Medical Ethics about why it might be good for children to have not two, not three, but four or many more genetic parents. Quite a lot of the reasoning by British bioethicist John Harris evokes the slippery slope for me. Here’s an example:

“If we find it morally unproblematic that people who cannot achieve natural reproduction rely on assisted reproduction to have genetically related kin then we find no reason why this should not hold also for non-couple partnerships for whom simultaneous genetic kinship is currently prevented.”

Let’s put this in Plain English. If, back in 1978, when Lesley and John Brown wanted their own genetically-related baby, we invented IVF, then now when Tom, Dick, Harry, and Sarah want their own genetically-related baby, we should invent “multiplex parenting”.

I admit that logic has never been one of my strong points (I’m a journalist, right?), but the “if… then” construction looks curiously like a slippery slope to me. Does anyone else think so?

Cheers, 

Michael Cook
Are they more common than we think?
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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

Latest posts by Michael Cook (see all)

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