Public Reason, Bioethics, and Public Policy: A Seductive Delusion or Ambitious Aspiration?

Thu, February 27, 2025 3:00 PM at James Madison College library

Please join us on Thursday, February 27, for the first meeting of the JMC Political Theory Colloquium (3 to 5 p.m., JMC Library) to discuss Leonard Fleck’s paper Public Reason, Bioethics, and Public Policy: A Seductive Delusion or Ambitious Aspiration? The paper is presented and to be discussed in the context of Professor Fleck’s ongoing book project.

Leonard Fleck is a MSU University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics. His interests focus on medical ethics, health care policy, priority-setting and rationing, social and political philosophy, and reproductive decision-making. He explores the role of community dialogue (rational democratic deliberation) in addressing controversial issues of ethics and public policy related to emerging genetic technologies as well as problems of health care justice related to precision medicine. In that latter connection, he is the author of Precision Medicine and Distributive Justice: Wicked Problems for Democratic Deliberation (Oxford University Press, 2022). He is also the author of Bioethics, Public Reason, and Religion (Cambridge University press, 2022). In that volume he addresses several contemporary issues related to bioethics and religion from a Rawlsian public reason perspective such as research with human embryos, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and the use of artificial wombs for reproduction.

Professor Guido Parietti and Marek M. Jaros (PTCD, Senior) will serve as discussants.

Coffee and light refreshment will be offered.