ABSTRACT

Professor Zarefsky and I couldn’t have choreographed our essays better. He has discussed a number of themes that I am also going to talk about in the context of the fi eld of bioethics. I recognize that many readers don’t eat, sleep, and drink bioethics, so I am going to try and do some suitable translating. What I am talking about should be fairly clear, because so many of the themes I’ll mention are familiar to readers just by virtue of their being informed citizens. My focus here is what I like to call the moral paradox of consensus. My argument concerning this paradox initially took form in my book Deciding Together: Bioethics and Moral Consensus (Moreno 1995). As many know, this became a Broadway play and bestseller and I was played by Ben Affl eck in the movie, but it was his fi rst role, so it didn’t get a lot of attention.