Our one true privilege
Commentary by ADAM TANOUS
"You have to go forwards to go back, so you’d
better press on."
So says Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory.
It is the time of year when everyone seems determined to
make resolutions about the future. But to further twist Roald Dahl’s
logic, perhaps we need to go back to go forward.
Here are a few of the issues that poked through the
surface of public discourse this year. I’ve chosen these, because I
think they all have an iceberg quality about them. The ultimate
ramifications have yet to come into view. And since no one wants to be the
last, poor fool on the dance floor when the Titanic goes down, I think
these questions are worth our attentions.
Privacy: With the increasing sophistication of
information technology and scientific knowledge, the line between public
knowledge and private lives has become one drawn in sand. The Internet has
dramatically expanded our freedom of speech and access to information:
both of which sustain democracy. Implicit in "being connected to the
Web," however, is the risk of the Web being connected to us. I think
it is unknown how secure our Web transactions and conversations really
are. Should law enforcement agencies, or anyone for that matter, be
allowed to listen to our conversations? If so, when? Who, if anyone, will
be the editor for the Internet? Should cookie recipes and information on
bomb making have equal footing on the Web?
While the deciphering of the human genetic code this year
represents a remarkable achievement, it poses another potential threat to
our privacy. It won’t be long before a simple blood test will reveal an
enormous amount of information about a person. Who should be privy to the
details? Should health and life insurance companies, employers, government
agencies and anyone else know what diseases or disabilities we are likely
to develop? How should that knowledge play into our reproductive
decisions? Can genetic sequences be patented? If so, where do ethical
concerns intersect with economic considerations?
Social and economic divisions: What didn’t
get widely reported after the election were the striking splits in the
electorate that were not simply between Democrats and Republicans. Exit
polls revealed that if one looked at voting as a function of other
variables like gender, ethnic group, income, education and rural versus
urban living, there were much greater differences in the results. It
seemed to indicate that there are schisms in our society that tend to get
overlooked. There are obviously large groups of people with widely
divergent experiences in America and different views of what problems need
redress.
Medical ethics: The case of Jodie and Mary, the
conjoined twins in England, underscored the type of dilemmas we are bound
to face with our increasing medical capabilities. Our medical
sophistication is progressing more rapidly than our ability to comprehend
the consequences of our actions. Does our ability to perform a procedure
necessitate doing it? Further, as in the case of the twins, who should
make the decisions as to what should be done and when?
The exploding field of genetics provides another ethical
mine field that will not soon go away. In the past, genetic changes have
occurred over long spans of time. Suddenly, they can take place in the
course of two generations. While we are able to make genetic changes in
the natural world, we cannot really predict how those changes might
propagate.
The environment and states’ rights: President
Clinton’s Roadless Initiative brought into focus the coming battles over
the environment. At issue is the perennial tug of war between federal
concerns and states’ rights. When it comes to timber harvesting, water
rights, air pollution and the dispensing of chemical or nuclear waste, the
world has become a smaller place. For instance, what we do to the water
here affects people in Washington and Oregon. What they do with the dams
on the waterways affect us as well. Environmental quantities such as air
and water flow across borders. On the other hand, legal rights and
jurisdictions do not. Reconciling these two facts will be a challenge.
Public health: With the reports out of the World
AIDS Conference this year, it is apparent that many populations are being
devastated by this disease. Other epidemics such as antibiotic-resistant
tuberculosis in the former Soviet Union, outbreaks of Ebola in Uganda and
enormous casualties caused by water-borne organisms in the third world
indicate that public health is in a precarious state. Resources to fight
these diseases are either stretched thin or, in some cases, are
nonexistent. How we deploy resources will not only form the basis for
future political battles but for moral debates as well. Given the facility
with which people cross the globe now, diseases are beginning to travel
with them. It seems clear that unless the world is healthy no one
population can be healthy.
Alienated children: Perhaps our biggest failure of
late has been with our children. For a variety of reasons, children have
become less integrated into our lives. The fact that the world is a
different place today from what it was, say 30 years ago, is not a
sufficient justification for the situation. We have much to learn from our
children. We are very little without them. With them, we are whole and
filled with purpose.
The year’s debates started with a child: a Cuban boy who
was plucked from the Atlantic. We might have learned a lot from little
Elian Gonzalez. The entire legal and public relations struggle came down
to a simple question: how do we define a happy ending? And this is the
ultimate question we face.
We are forever stuck with defining our own happy ending.
It is the one true privilege we have.
