In October 2003, the President’s Council on Bioethics published Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. This three-hundred-and-some-odd-page report summarizes the Council’s reflections on a wide variety of ethical issues that recent advances in biotechnology—from gene therapy for fetuses to the development of psychotropic and “age-retarding” drugs—have forced upon the public’s attention. This volume now has a mate: Being Human: Readings from the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Each of these books is surely among the most unusual of documents ever to roll off the presses of a government printing office. (Both, incidentally, are available upon application from The President’s Council on Bioethics, www.bioethics.gov.) Beyond Therapy does address a number of pragmatic questions. For example, health care already accoun ...

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