ABSTRACT
Sociology can help bioethicists become more sensitive to the contexts in which patients and biomedical personnel act and react, and to the complexities and ambiguities involved in real life ethical dilemmas. Sociology can help one to address such issues and to grasp the elements of belief, fantasy, hubris, irrationality, ideology, and idolatry even in the seemingly scientific and rational stances of physicians and researchers. The report of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) on Cloning Human Beings exemplifies this endpoint in the evolution of the bioethical enterprise: the demoralization of bioethics. As the NBAC notes, the psychological and social impact of cloning may well be "directly related to certain specific cultural values." The NBAC also asserts, entirely without evidence, which what copies and others will likely believe "will depend on the facts that emerge and what scientists and ethicists claim.".
