Ana Lita, Director of IHEU-Appignani Humanist Center for Bio-ethics

The debate on many bioethics issues has been dominated by the religious right, but bioethics needs input from the rational, scientific, humanist, atheist, ethical perspective as well. IHEU recently confirmed the appointment of Dr. Ana Lita as Director of the IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics at the United Nations in New York City. Dr. Lita who holds a Ph.D. in applied ethics and social philosophy from Bowling Green State University speaks to IHEU Executive Director Babu Gogineni about her priorities.

Babu Gogineni: Ana Lita, welcome to the IHEU as Director of the IHEU-Appignani Humanist Center for Bioethics at the UN! Tell us about your personal and educational background?

Ana Lita:

I hold a B.A. diploma (first degree) in history of western philosophy from the University of Bucharest, Romania; an MA in sociology focused on political culture from the Central European University in Prague; an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University, USA in philosophy.

Babu Gogineni:

Your doctorate is in Ethics – how did you get interested in bio-ethical issues?

Ana Lita:

Early in my teenage life I was profoundly impressed by Socrates’ moral philosophy. Socrates’ exhortation "the unexamined life is not worth living," also had an impact on my choosing philosophy as a field of study.

My studies led me to the United States, and here I was amazed to see that not a week goes by without some controversial biomedical cases or issues making their way into the nation’s headlines. And I was captured myself by those issues and controversies.

Since I specialized in applied philosophy and ethics, for the last three years, I held a tenure-track teaching position at Lincoln University of Missouri, USA, where I taught health care ethics, medical ethics, and business ethics.

Babu Gogineni:

So, how did the IHEU-Appignani Humanist Center for Bioethics get established?

Ana Lita:

Initially, IHEU applied for a grant to the Appignani Foundation in the United States to start such a center – and the Foundation granted IHEU $150,000 to establish and sustain a Humanist Center for Bioethics for the next three years.

The field of Bio-ethics needs input from the rational, humanist ethical perspective. Developments in Bio-ethics today could determine the course and direction for humanity for the next hundred years, anticipating where modern biology will lead us.

The IHEU-Appignani Center will primarily focus on raising the awareness of bio-ethical issues – especially those that could arise in the foreseeable future at the UN, as well as on developing and implementing an international program for influencing UN decisions.

Babu Gogineni:

What is your brief as Director of the Center?

Ana Lita:

Some of the bio-ethical issues such as stem cell research, cloning, euthanasia, genetic modification of food crops, spread of HIV/AIDS, and reproductive rights and family planning are being discussed today in the public arena with varying degrees of openness and competence.

Look at the way human cloning for therapeutic purposes and the use of Genetically Modified food to help alleviate world hunger are being discussed today. Our work will also serve as a means to counteract simplistic responses to increasingly complex bio-scientific issues.

With support from IHEU headquarters in London, and working with IHEU’s volunteer representatives at the UN in New York, I hope to work to raise the level of debate and also the degree of awareness.

Our new Center expects to create space for humancentred reflection on all these issues in the first instance and evolve into an important and internationally recognised humanist center in the long term.

Babu Gogineni:

How do you propose to implement such an agenda?

Ana Lita:

We will begin by creating an advisory board of experts in bio-ethics and the law, and will also start networking with other national and international bioethics institutions. The Center is of course an integral part of IHEU, and our work here will assist the IHEU in drafting policy statements and legislative proposals regarding bioethical issues worldwide. In that sense the Center will also be a resource for IHEU’s member organisations.

IHEU has a consultative status at the UN, and with the Council of Europe. We also maintain Operational Relations with UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris. As such, IHEU has the right to attend all UN ECOSOC conferences and we will be able to openly seek to appropriately influence discussions on all relevant bio-ethical issues whenever they are on the agenda. As is well known, the UN is awash with pressing ethical issues that demand careful thinking about their moral and religious implications. The IHEU thus will add its voice and the strength of rational human-centered debate to the numerous debates at the United Nations as that body seeks to craft international policy for the twentyfirst century. It is important to do this of course, because otherwise the religious worldview is in danger of prevailing!

The Center will organize periodic workshops and conferences, produce a topical website at IHEU’s site, and regular news will be carried also in the International Humanist News so that we will keep in touch with the Humanist community too on a continuous basis.

Babu Gogineni:

Which are the main issues in Bio-ethics that you see as priority for the IHEU’s future agenda?

Ana Lita:

IHEU’s priorities are set of course by IHEU’s Executive Committee which in turn takes its brief from IHEU’s General Assembly, and the General Assembly is the body which makes policy. However, the Center is established in a context where stem cell research and cloning are the main issues today that need humanist examination. Some policymakers need to be convinced that these issues are extremely important for the future of humankind. The genetic modification of food crops is also an important issue in that it could help alleviate world hunger and it seems to relate to the development of a more flexible policy regarding the intellectual property rights of international corporations.

Also, reproductive choice and family planning options are an individual’s human rights, which cannot be "trumped" by strictly religious beliefs of others. The Center exists to help to "untangle" these  issues in an innovative way.

Babu Gogineni:

Any dangers that you see on the horizon for the advancement of bio-ethics in the world?

Ana Lita:

First, there is the danger of the undue influence of authoritarian religion. In debating some of the issues mentioned above, one often confronts the following kind of rationale: "My scripture tells me so," or "My tradition tells me so." Because scripture and tradition are not selfinterpreting, they are vulnerable to disputes about their meaning and implication (Thou shalt not kill whom?) that can only be resolved by reflection on the moral reasons at hand. Ethical reasoning par excellence takes place outside the framework of any particular religious commitments. Humanist ethics appeals to principles based on interrelated human values such as freedom, autonomy, justice, responsibility and solidarity, not authoritarian claims.

Second, there is the danger of a New Romanticism, especially in Europe, which decries science and technology as assaults on the purity of "nature." It is suspicious of a thoroughly materialistic outlook on human nature and distrustful of secular reason as a source of practical wisdom.

Finally, there is the challenge of democratically unaccountable corporate power. Bioscience relies on the tremendous innovative force of market economies. Yet increasingly, access to healthcare and the control of data necessary to the public good are influenced by multinational conglomerates whose behaviour is not clearly constrained by any norms of the global community.

Babu Gogineni:

You are a Humanist, but have you been involved in the organized Humanist movement?

Ana Lita:

No, but studying philosophy over the years (in both Eastern Europe and the West) helped me form my long-term convictions that a broadly humanist approach to the world is worth my serious professional attention.