O. Carter Snead discusses public bioethics, human flourishing
O. Carter Snead, leading world expert in bioethics and former director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture (dCEC), gave a lecture titled “What We Owe to Each Other: Embodiment, Flourishing, and Public Bioethics” on February 20.
The lecture, part of the 2024–25 Notre Dame Forum, also served as the inaugural Charles E. Rice Chair Lecture. As the first recipient of the position, Snead’s work stands as an important contribution to Notre Dame’s long-standing commitment to exploring bioethics through the integration of faith and reason.
Appointed to the newly endowed Charles E. Rice chair in 2023, Snead teaches in the Notre Dame Law School and is a Concurrent Professor of Political Science. He previously served as the Director of the dCEC from 2012 to 2024. Snead is the author of more than 70 publications, including his acclaimed book, What It Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, which earned a spot on the Wall Street Journal’s prestigious Ten Best Books of 2020 list.
Snead focused on a correct understanding of the embodied nature of each human being, saying, “Reflecting upon and exploring our nature as embodied beings leads us to insights about what we owe each other.”
Snead criticized the current focus of American law, which grounds the human identity and experience in expressive individualism and radical license. Since the purpose of law is the “protection and flourishing of persons,” Snead noted that the legal status of human identity is crucial to respecting the embodied nature of human beings. Rather than have unfettered freedoms, he argued that human beings need “networks of unconditional and uncalculated giving and graceful receiving.”
The focus of the dCEC on bioethics comes during a tumultuous time of controversy over various bioethical issues, especially following President Donald Trump’s executive order expanding access to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in the United States on February 18.
Snead highlighted the importance of Notre Dame’s role in investigating these controversial topics and recent dCEC concentration on bioethics, stating, “This is a very special community of learning where we do not shy away from the deepest and most difficult questions of human meaning and how to care rightly for one another.”
He continued, “Our Lady’s university—particularly at the de Nicola Center—is the perfect place to explore these issues together as friends, given the Church’s beautiful and compelling vision of human dignity, flourishing, and the common good.”
Snead’s research targets bioethics issues related to reproduction, including IVF, surrogacy, and abortion. In processes such as IVF and surrogacy, Snead argued that embryos and women are treated as commercial commodities. He criticized modern science’s goal of artificial fertility treatments to “help parents realize their dream of a disease-free legacy,” as articulated by American researcher Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh.
Bartosz Chramiec, sophomore resident of Fisher Hall, told the Rover, “Research about how ethical frameworks impact our nation’s laws, like Professor Snead’s, is important for the de Nicola Center and Notre Dame because, if there’s any Catholic institution of higher education that can be a force for good and conform our nation’s laws to God’s laws, it’s Notre Dame.”
Snead’s lecture followed another dCEC-sponsored panel on bioethics on February 5. During this event, Paul Scherz, a dCEC Fellow and author of The Ethics of Precision Medicine: The Problems of Prevention in Healthcare, discussed the topic of his book in conversation with visiting dCEC scholars Christopher Kaczor, Mary Hirschfeld, and Christopher Tollefsen.
The next event in the 2024–25 Notre Dame Forum series is titled “Catholic Perspectives on Israel-Palestine” on Wednesday, February 26.
Kathryn Schneider is a junior physics major with minors in math, Spanish, and theology. You can probably find her trying to add a bioethics minor to her already lengthy résumé. Contact her at kschnei6@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Irish Rover
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