ABSTRACT
The bioethics appropriate to such cost-benefit questions is a kind of consumer protectionism; it insists, for example, on full disclosure of risks, preferably based on follow-up studies of how such fixings have worked, or not, in past interventions. Protectionist bioethics takes for granted the presuppositions of consumerism; thus it wants people to know exactly what is being delivered at what cost and with what risk. Socratic bioethics seeks to offer alternative courses of action as real possibilities for people who face decisions. If consumer-protection bioethics can be beneficial to people’s physical, emotional, and economic welfare, Socratic bioethics can be liberating. Sociologist Alan Wolfe puts an optimistic spin on this lack of confidence, calling it “moral freedom”. The people whom Wolfe interviewed about what they understood as moral problems demonstrate their will to do the right thing alongside their distrust of canonical standards of what is right.
