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Leon Kass
Leon Richard Kass (born February 12, 1939) is an American physician,
Leon Richard Kass
scientist, educator, and public intellectual, best known as proponent of
liberal education via the "Great Books," as an opponent of human cloning,
life extension and euthanasia, as a critic of certain areas of technological
progress and embryo research, and for his controversial tenure as chairman
of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. Although Kass is
often referred to as a bioethicist,[1] he eschews the term and refers to
himself as "an old-fashioned humanist. A humanist is concerned broadly
with all aspects of human life, not just the ethical."[2]

Kass is currently the Addie Clark Harding Professor Emeritus in the College
and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and the
Hertog Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His books include
Toward A More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs; The Hungry
Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature; Life, Liberty, and the
Born Leon Richard Kass
Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics; The Beginning of Wisdom:
February 12, 1939
Reading Genesis; and What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Story, Speech, and Song.
Residence United States
Alma mater University of Chicago
Harvard University
Contents
Known for President's Council on
Early life and education
Bioethics from 2001 to
First forays into bioethics 2005; appreciation of
Teaching experience the natural; opposition
"The president's philosopher" to human cloning and
Views on bioethics euthanasia
Biotechnology and medical enhancement
Scientific career
Stem cell research
Human cloning Fields Bioethics, medicine,
A concern for "the natural" human rights

Philosophical studies Institutions University of Chicago

Biblical studies
Philosophical influences
Honors and awards
Selected bibliography
Books
Articles and lectures
Family
See also

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References
External links

Early life and education

Kass was born in Chicago to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He described his family as "Yiddish speaking,
secular, socialist."[3] Although his upbringing was not religious, it was moralist: "Morality, not Judaism, was the
religion of our home, morality colored progressively pink with socialism, less on grounds of Marxist theory, more out of
zeal for social justice and human dignity."[4] He would not begin to explore his religious heritage until later in his career

Kass enrolled in the University of Chicago at age 15, graduating from the College with a degree in biology in 1958. The
College was well known for its extensive core curriculum, and Kass studied the "great books" then prescribed by
Chicago's core. "I became a devotee of liberal education . . . with a special fondness for the Greeks."[4] He graduated
from the University of Chicago's medical school in 1962 and, following an internship in medicine at the Beth Israel
Hospital in Boston, completed a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Harvard University in 1967, working in the laboratory of
Nobel laureate Konrad Bloch.[5] Around this time Kass began to develop an interest in morality in medicine and in bio
medical ethics, instigated partly as a result of reading Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.[6]

In 1961, Kass married the former Amy Apfel, a fellow graduate of the College of the University of Chicago. As
instructors in the College in later years, they would frequently teach seminars together.[7] Their scholarly collaborations
include several articles on marriage and courtship and a reader on the subject.[8] In 2011, they published a joint project,
What So Proudly We Hail, that uses literature to examine the American soul.[9] Amy Kass died of complications from
ovarian cancer and leukemia on August 19, 2015.[10]

Leon and Amy Kass went to Holmes County, Mississippi, during the summer of 1965 to do civil rights work. Working
with the Medical Community for Human Rights and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the Kasses
"lived with a farmer couple in the Mount Olive community, in a house with no telephone, hot water, or indoor toilet.
They visited many families in the community, participated in their activities, and helped with voter registration and
other efforts to encourage the people to organize themselves in defense of their rights."[11] Later that fall, Kass wrote a
letter to his family and friends detailing his and his wife's experiences and appealing to them to donate to the Civil
Rights Movement.[11]

The character of the rural, poor, and uneducated African Americans with whom they lived and worked contrasted with
his colleagues at Harvard and other elite universities. It was this experience, he later said, that

caused me to shed my enlightenment faith and ultimately begin a journey in which Jewish thought would
ultimately come to play a more prominent part. Why, I wondered then, was there more honor, decency,
and dignity among the impoverished and ignorant but church-going black farmers with whom we had
lived than among my privileged and educated fellow graduate students at Harvard, whose progressive
opinions I shared but whose self-absorption and self-indulgence put me off. If poverty and superstition
were the cause of bad character, how to explain this?[4]

First forays into bioethics

After completing his doctorate, Kass conducted molecular biology research for the National Institutes of Health,

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authoring several scientific papers[12] while serving in the U.S. Public Health Service. His early interest in bioethics was
stimulated by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, both of which he read at the
suggestion of Harvey Flaumenhaft.[13] In these books, Kass saw examples of "how the scientific project to master nature
could, if we are not careful, lead to our dehumanization, via eugenics, drug-induced contentment, and other
transformations of human nature, possibilities already foreseeable in the new biology. . . . Will man remain a creature
made in the image of God, aspiring to align himself with the divine, or will he become an artifact created by man in the
image of God-knows-what, fulfilling the aspirations only of human will? . . . I soon shifted my career from doing science
to thinking about its human meaning."[4]

In 1967, Kass read an article by Joshua Lederberg suggesting that humans could one day be cloned, permitting the
perpetuation of the genotypes of geniuses.[14] In a letter to the editor, Kass made a moral case against cloning and
suggested that "the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanize him."[5] Thus began a second career of
writing on bioethics, including essays on organ transplantation, genetic screening, in vitro fertilization, cloning, the
conquest of aging, assisted suicide, medical ethics, and biotechnology. Kass was also involved in founding the Hastings
Center. In 1970, he left the laboratory at NIH to become the executive director of the Committee on Life Sciences and
Social Policy at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, which produced the first public
document that tried to assess the ethical and social consequences of the coming advances in biotechnology.[15]

Teaching experience
As he moved from biology to bioethics, Kass also moved from full-time research into teaching, first at St. John's College
from 1972 to 1976, Georgetown University from 1974 to 1976, and at Chicago from 1976 onward. At St. John's, Kass
taught in the Great Books program as well as in-depth studies of Aristotle's De Anima and Nicomachean Ethics and
Darwin's On the Origin of Species. At the University of Chicago, Kass taught courses across the humanities and
sciences, including both undergraduate and graduate seminars in the Nicomachean Ethics, Plato's Symposium and
Meno, Lucretius, human passions, science and society, Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Genesis,
Darwinism, Descartes's Discourse on the Method, classical geometry, Tolstoy's War and Peace, marriage and
courtship, Exodus, and biotechnology.

Along with his wife and other colleagues, Kass cofounded in 1977 the "Human Being and Citizen" common core course
at Chicago, today the most popular humanities core course at Chicago, devoted to the question of what is an excellent
human being and what an excellent citizen.[16] In 1983, he, Allan Bloom, and James M. Redfield founded the
"Fundamentals: Issues and Texts" program. Kass taught in and chaired this program for eighteen years. He won the
University of Chicago's Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate
Teaching in 1983 and the Amoco Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching in
1993.[12]

"The president's philosopher"

As the stem cell controversy brewed in the late 1990s and into 2001, President George W. Bush had to decide whether
to allow federal funding for research on stem cells derived from embryos. Many scientists were advocating the removal
of limits on embryonic stem cell research, but critics expressed concern about what they characterized as the wanton
destruction of human life. In an August 2001 speech, Bush announced that he would support funding research on stem
cell lines already created—"where the life and death decision has already been made"—but not on lines created by the
further destruction of embryos. And because "[e]mbryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral
hazards," Bush said, he would create the President's Council on Bioethics, to be led by Kass and with a mandate to

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"monitor stem cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider all of the medical
and ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation."[17] As the council was appointed and prepared to begin meeting in
early 2002, Kass received a great deal of media attention, especially due to his reputation for pessimism and concern
about the moral implications of scientific progress with respect to health and life issues. Calling him "the president's
philosopher," U.S. News and World Report noted that "he tends to dwell on the dark side of modern medicine. . . . Kass
has tried to raise the public's consciousness of emerging technology's risks to values that humanity holds dear."[18] The
Council from its inception was charged by Bush to consider these larger questions, well beyond the domain of stem cell
research. The first specific task of the Council, according to the executive order creating it, was "to undertake
fundamental inquiry into the human and moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and
technology."[19]

The composition of the Council was also subject to controversy. Kass was accused of "stacking the deck" with
philosophers, scientists, and public intellectuals likely to oppose "unfettered medical research in the area of stem cells,
therapeutic cloning, and reproductive cloning. Given that fact, researchers had better worry a lot about what the
Council is likely to recommend to the president."[20] Critics also charged that Kass eliminated those who disagreed with
him, such as Elizabeth Blackburn and William May, and replacing them with opponents of cloning.[21][22] Kass replied
to these criticisms by saying that the Council was more intellectually diverse than prior bioethics commissions precisely
because it included opponents of abortion.[22] (Previous commissions had "excluded representatives of the right to life
movement."[23]) Also, the council members Robert George, Francis Fukuyama and James Q. Wilson debated with stark
disagreement their opposing points of view on the biological status of the human embryo and came to no agreed
conclusions.[24] Since Bush had deliberately created the Council to debate and clarify the issues without necessarily
reaching consensus, Kass said that he welcomed disagreement within the Council: "This council is easily the most
intellectually and ethically diverse of the bioethics commissions to date. We have worked with mutual respect while not
papering over our differences. No one who has attended any of our meetings or read the transcripts can believe that we
do anything but serious and careful work, without regard to ideology, partisan politics or religious beliefs."[25]

The Council has been renewed by executive order every two years since 2001, and the subjects it considered ranged
beyond the stem cell battles during which it was established. Kass sought throughout to develop a "richer" bioethics,
attentive to larger human and philosophical questions at the root of bioethical dilemmas, and he lamented that the
Council was pigeonholed: "The Council came into existence identified as the 'stem cell council,' and people on all sides
of the embryo research debate seem to care more about the Council's views on this subject than about anything else.
Not by our choice—and certainly not by mine—the Council was born smack in the middle of 'embryoville,' and it has
never been able to leave this highly political field."[26] Despite the public's narrow conception of its work, during Kass's
chairmanship, the Council produced five book-length reports, a white paper, and a humanistic reader on ten topics
generally neglected in the bioethics literature.[27]

Kass described the Council's work as "public bioethics," rejecting previous approaches that favored government by self-
appointed "experts"—scientific or bioethical—and presenting the issues in terms accessible to the broader public and its
political representatives. He sought a "richer" inquiry that debates "ends as well as means," and the Council's reports
addressed larger human questions, "not merely administrative or regulatory ones." He said that it presented all sides of
ethical issues in order to create a more substantive moral discourse. "A proper bioethics must lead public reflection on
the ways in which new biotechnologies may affect those things that matter most regarding how human lives are lived,"
Kass wrote. "This means beginning by reflecting upon the highest human goods and understanding the latest
technological advances in this light."[26] Eschewing much of the language and theoretical framework of academic
bioethics,[22] Kass drew on literary, philosophical, and theological sources to inform the Council's discussion. At the
Council's first meeting, he led a discussion of "The Birth-Mark," a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.[18]

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Kass stepped down as chairman of the Council in October 2005 and remained a member of the Council until 2007.[28]
He returned to positions at the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Chicago.

Views on bioethics

Biotechnology and medical enhancement

While welcoming biotechnology for its therapeutic promise—to cure disease, relieve suffering, and to restore health and
wholeness—Kass worries about its uses for enhancement (boosting capability beyond what is given naturally and even
altering human nature). While biotechnology offers great promise for health care, it has applications for "many other
ends, good ones and bad." Biotechnology can be employed to produce "better children, superior performance, ageless
bodies, and happy souls." Kass argues that biotechnology may eventually be used as a substitute for virtue, hard work,
study, or love in order to "fulfill our deepest human desires," but in the end lowering the reach of those desires only to
those objects that can be realized technologically.[29] His worries about biotechnology stem from what he calls "the
technological disposition," which transforms the meaning and character of human life by believing that "all aspects of
life can be rationally mastered through technique."[30]

Stem cell research

Kass has been a consistent critic of embryo research, including embryonic stem cell research, because of its
"exploitation" and "destruction" of nascent human life. Although he claims to be agnostic about the moral standing of
an early human embryo, he worries about treating human life, at whatever stage, merely as a natural resource. "There is
something deeply repugnant and fundamentally transgressive about such a utilitarian treatment of prospective human
life," he writes.[31] But because he recognized the potential of such cells for medical research, he led the President's
Council on Bioethics to examine alternative avenues of obtaining pluripotent stem cells: "Pluripotent cells might be
obtainable from already dead (not just unwanted or doomed but actually dead) embryos, some of whose individual cells
might nonetheless still be viable; from living embryos by nondestructive biopsy; from bioengineered, embryo-like
artifacts; and from reprogrammed body cells, taken from children or adults, that are induced to return to the
undifferentiated state of pluripotency. . . . We should be hopeful that a technological solution to our moral dilemma
might soon be found and that this divisive piece of our recent political history will soon come to an end."[32]

In 2007, in two separate studies, research teams led by James Thomson and Shinya Yamanaka created induced
pluripotent stem cells from adult cells, meaning that the destruction of embryos for stem cells might no longer be
necessary. In 2009, the reprogramming technique was further improved, as skin cells were returned to pluripotency by
the transfer of a few exogeneous genes and without the use of foreign viruses as vectors.[33] Robert P. George praised
Kass as the driving intellectual force against embryo-killing and in favor of finding alternative methods of obtaining
pluripotent stem cells: "All along, it was Dr. Kass who said that reprogramming methods would, if pursued vigorously,
enable us to realize the full benefits of stem cell science while respecting human dignity."[34]

Human cloning
Kass supports a universal ban on the cloning of humans on the grounds that cloning is an affront to morality and
human dignity. In a 1997 article in The New Republic entitled "The Wisdom of Repugnance," Kass suggests that we
should respect the revulsion most people feel about cloning human beings, just as we respect their supposed revulsion
at incest and cannibalism. "In crucial cases," he writes, "repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom,

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beyond reason's power fully to articulate it." Kass writes that modern ethical discourse, which emphasizes autonomy,
equity, and utility, fails to provide the moral guidance that the modern world demands:

Repugnance, here as elsewhere, revolts against the excesses of human willfulness, warning us not to
transgress what is unspeakably profound. Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible
so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our
bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only
voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have
forgotten how to shudder.

A society that tolerates cloning, Kass writes, "has forgotten how to shudder [and] always rationalizes away the
abominable. A society that allows cloning has, whether it knows it or not, tacitly said yes to converting procreation into
manufacture and to treating our children as pure projects of our will."[31][35]

In response to Kass, other ethicists have argued that reactions of repugnance or disgust are not a valid basis for banning
cloning because such feelings are subjective, dictated by cultural norms, and change over time.[36] Fritz Allhoff of the
American Medical Association Division of Bioethics contends that "racial integration once elicited the same sentiments
of repugnance that Kass claims that cloning elicits now; surely public sentiment should not be taken as a moral
guide."[36] Martha Nussbaum has advanced a broader argument against using feelings of disgust as a basis for
policymaking, writing that "laws and social rules" should be based on "substantive harm, rather than on the symbolic
relationship an object bears to our anxieties." [37]

In addition to opposing cloning on the grounds of repugnance, Kass has also argued that cloning constitutes an
"unethical experiment upon the resulting child-to-be"; creates confusions of identity and individuality; "turns begetting
into making"; and, by giving parents control over a child's genetic make-up, exacerbates the "dangerous" idea of
parental control over children's lives and prospects. "One must never forget that these are human beings upon whom
our eugenic or merely playful fantasies are to be enacted," he writes.[31][35]

A concern for "the natural"

Although he appreciates that human beings are always modifying what is naturally given, Kass worries about the lack of
standards for human life in a world in which human nature is treated as utterly malleable and in which the boundaries
of human life are all eroded. Kass places "special value on the natural human cycle of birth, procreation and death" and
views death as a "necessary and desirable end" and the human and human aspirations that are derived from it. He
views human mortality as a blessing in disguise, and he has opposed deliberate efforts to increase maximum human life
expectancy in pursuit of biological immortality.[38] Kass was an early critic of the widespread use of reproductive
technologies like in vitro fertilization, partly because he was concerned that their use obscures truths about the essence
of human life and society that are embedded in the natural reproductive process. (He later endorsed the marital use of
in vitro after Louise Brown was born in 1978.[39][40])

Kass sees human cloning as a natural progression from the decoupling of sex and procreation, begun with in vitro
fertilization: "Cloning turns out to be the perfect embodiment of the ruling opinions of our new age. Thanks to the
sexual revolution, we are able to deny in practice, and increasingly in thought, the inherent procreative teleology of
sexuality itself. But, if sex has no intrinsic connection to generating babies, babies need have no necessary connection to
sex. . . . For that new dispensation, the clone is the ideal emblem: the ultimate 'single-parent child.'"[35] As in his other
writings, Kass emphasizes the connection of reproduction to marriage and family life: "No child conceived with the aid

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of assisted reproductive technologies should be denied the lineage and biological ties to two parents that all children
born 'naturally' have. No child should have to say, 'An embryo was my father.'"[2]

Philosophical studies
For much of his career, Kass's scholarship moved away from the practical issues of bioethics to issues of human nature
and human good, and nearly all of his teaching at Chicago has been about these topics. Yet despite his stated interest in
"the natural," Kass does not hold to any traditional teaching of "natural law," and he does not derive any moral rules
from nature. Rather, he sees human nature as offering, at most, intimations and "pointings" toward human flourishing
and human fulfillment, but pointings in need of both cultural encouragement and cultural restraint if humans are to
become the upright animal advertised in his special posture.[41][42]

Biblical studies
In addition to his studies in natural philosophy and philosophical anthropology, Kass has in recent years been teaching
and writing about the Hebrew Bible, especially the book of Genesis. Kass's interest in the Bible began with weekly
invitational readings of Genesis that he and his wife, Amy, had organized for students while teaching at the University
of Chicago.[43] In his 2009 Jefferson Lecture, Kass said that he found in the Bible "an account of human life that can
more than hold its own with the anthropological and ethical teachings offered by the great poets and philosophers,"
with "teachings of righteousness, humaneness, and human dignity . . . that were undreamt of in my prior
philosophizing."[44] Kass reads the text philosophically, not theologically, in the belief that this text, thoughtfully read,
has much to teach everyone—believers and non-believers alike—about the human condition and how it may be
improved. His full lengthy commentary on Genesis, based on his teaching of the text over twenty years, is addressed
primarily to the "children of skeptics" (such as himself). He concludes:

Long dwelling with the book of Genesis, and ever marveling at its beauty, its profundity, and, above all, its
power to illuminate and lift the soul, this exhilarated reader of Genesis stands before it on his intellectual
knees, filled with awe and gratitude for a text that makes such insights possible. I dare to hope that, with
my book as a companion, other wisdom-seeking readers may enjoy a similar experience.

Philosophical influences
Aldous Huxley
Hans Jonas
Jacob Klein
C. S. Lewis
Adolf Portmann
Paul Ramsey
Kurt Riezler
Erwin Straus
Leo Strauss

Honors and awards

Kass was named the 2009 Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Jefferson Lecture is
"the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the

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humanities."[45] Kass's lecture, delivered at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 2009. was entitled
"Looking for an Honest Man: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist".[44] In his lecture, he expressed the view that
science has become separated from its humanistic origins and the humanities have lost their connection to
metaphysical and theological concerns.[46]

In addition to his teaching awards from the University of Chicago, Kass also received the Harvard Centennial Medal
and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Gerhard Niemeyer Award in 2003 and the inaugural Bradley Prize from the
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2004. He has been given honorary degrees by the University of Dallas (1997),
the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies (2001), Carthage College (2002), and Yeshiva University (2003).[12] Kass is a
fellow of the Hastings Center.

Selected bibliography

Books
Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass, eds. The Meaning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What So Proudly We Hail, 2013.
Amy A. Kass, Leon R. Kass, and Diana Schaub, eds. What So Proudly We Hail, The American Soul In Story,
Speech, And Song. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2012. (ISBN 1610170067)
Leon R. Kass. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. New York: Free Press, 2003. (ISBN 0-7432-4299-8)
———. Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. San Francisco: Encounter Books,
2002. (ISBN 1-893554-55-4)
Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass, eds. Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying. South Bend,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000. (ISBN 0-268-01960-6)
Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson. The Ethics of Human Cloning. Washington: AEI Press, 1998.
(ISBN 0-8447-4050-0)
Leon R. Kass. The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
(ISBN 0-226-42568-1)
———. Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs. New York: Free Press, 1985.
(ISBN 0-02-918340-5)

Articles and lectures

Leon R. Kass. "Working as Meaningful Fulfillment (https://archive.is/20130416070454/http:
//www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-meaning-of-america/working-as-meaningful-fulfillment)" 2012 Irving
Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, May 2, 2012.
Leon R. Kass. "Science, Religion, and the Human Future. (http://www.aei.org/article/25908)" Commentary (2007):
36–48.
Leon R. Kass. "Abraham Lincoln's Re-Founding of the Nation (http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-
meaning-of-america/abraham-lincolns-re-founding-of-the-nation)" Delivered at the AEI World Forum, June 22,
2007.
Leon R. Kass and Eric Cohen. "'Cast Me Not Off in Old Age.' (http://www.aei.org/article/23701)" Commentary
(2006).
Leon R. Kass. "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection
(http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/ageless-bodies-happy-souls)." The New Atlantis 1 (2003): 9–28
———. Foreword. In Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, report of the President's Council on
Bioethics. New York: PublicAffairs, 2002. (ISBN 1-58648-176-2)
———. "The Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Human Beings." The New Republic
(June 2, 1997).
———. "The End of Courtship. (http://www.aei.org/article/14833)" The Public Interest 126 (1997): 39–63.
———. "Living Dangerously: Am I My (Foolish) Brother's Keeper? (https://web.archive.org/web/20090716080127

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/http://www.aei.org/speech/17981)" Bradley Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, March 14, 1994.
———. "The Ethical Dimensions of In Vitro Fertilization. (https://web.archive.org/web/20090716075953/http:
//www.aei.org/book/955)" American Enterprise Institute, 1979.

Family
In 2015 his wife Amy Kass died.[47]

He has two married daughters and four granddaughters; they reside in Chicago and Jerusalem.

See also
President's Council on Bioethics
Brave New World argument
Wisdom of repugnance

References
1. "Leon Kass," Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009.
2. Leon Kass, interviewed by Francis Wilkinson (http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/20-a-chat-with-george-
w-bush.s-conscience), Discover, February 2008.
3. NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. Bill Moyers Talks with Leon Kass. 7.25.03 | PBS (https://www.pbs.org
/now/transcript/transcript_kass.html)
4. Quoted in Harvey Flaumenhaft, "The Career of Leon Kass," Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy 20
(2003).
5. "Kass, Leon R.," Current Biography (August 2002).
6. http://contemporarythinkers.org/leon-kass/biography/
7. Mary Ruth Yoe, "Popping the Question: Is There Love at First Sight? (http://magazine.uchicago.edu
/0004/departments/coursework.html)" University of Chicago Magazine 92, no. 4 (April 2000).
8. Kass, Amy A.; Leon R. Kass (2000). Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying. South Bend,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-01960-6.
9. Kass, Leon. "What So Proudly We Hail" (http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org). Retrieved 20 December 2012.
10. Goldsborough, Bob. "Amy Kass, taught literature at University of Chicago, dies" (http://www.chicagotribune.com
/news/obituaries/ct-amy-kass-obituary-met-20150914-story.html). chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
11. Kass, Leon. "Letter on the Civil Rights Movement" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130221052112/http:
//www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-meaning-of-america/letter-on-the-civil-rights-movement). The
Meaning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What So Proudly We Hail. Archived from the original
(http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-meaning-of-america/letter-on-the-civil-rights-movement) on 21
February 2013. Retrieved 15 January 2013.
12. Curriculum vitae (http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/kass_cv.html), John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and
Practice of Democracy, University of Chicago, 1999.
13. http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/leon-kass/
14. Joshua Lederberg, "Unpredictable Variety Still Rules Human Reproduction (http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/A/B
/R/Z/_/bbabrz.pdf)," Washington Post, September 30, 1967.
15. National Research Council, Assessing Biomedical Technology: An Inquiry into the Nature of the Problem
(Washington: National Academy of Science, 1975).

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16. The College of the University of Chicago, Courses and Programs of Study 2002–2004
(http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/archives/catalog02-04/32-HCD-HUMA-02.pdf).
17. George W. Bush, Speech on stem cell research (https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases
/2001/08/20010809-2.html), August 9, 2001.
18. Nell Boyce, "The President's Philosopher," U.S. News and World Report, February 11, 2002.
19. Executive Order no. 13,237 (http://www.bioethics.gov/about/executive.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org
/web/20051123061302/http://www.bioethics.gov/about/executive.html) 2005-11-23 at the Wayback Machine,
"Creation of the President's Council on Bioethics," November 28, 2001.
20. Ronald Bailey, "Tallying the New Bioethics Council (http://www.reason.com/news/show/34752.html)," Reason
Online, January 23, 2002.
21. Timothy Noah, "Leon Kass, You Silly Ass! Please stop denying you tilted the bioethics panel (http://www.slate.com
/id/2096848/)," Slate, March 8, 2004.
22. Jeffrey Brainard, "A New Kind of Bioethics," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 21, 2004.
23. Carl Mitcham, "In Qualified Praise of the Leon Kass Council on Bioethics (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals
/SPT/v10n1/mitcham.html)," Techne 10, no. 1 (Fall 2006).
24. Lawler, Peter (2010). Modern and American Dignity. 114 of 6428: Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
ISBN 1-935191-89-6.
25. Leon Kass, "We Don't Play Politics with Science (http://www.aei.org/article/20037)," Washington Post, March 3,
2004.
26. Leon Kass, "Reflections on Public Bioethics: A View from the Trenches," Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 15,
no. 3 (September 2005).
27. See Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry (July 2002), Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the
Pursuit of Happiness (October 2003), Monitoring Stem Cell Research (January 2004), Reproduction and
Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies (March 2004), Alternative Sources of Pluripotent Stem
Cells (May 2005), Taking Care: Ethical Caregiving in Our Aging Society (September 2005), and Being Human:
Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics (December 2003). Available at "Archived copy"
(https://web.archive.org/web/20090307025936/http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/). Archived from the original
(http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/) on 2009-03-07. Retrieved 2009-03-05..
28. Jen Glickel, "Kass Leaves Post as Bush's Bioethics Chair (http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2005/10/3/kass-leaves-
post-as-bushs-bioethics-chair) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20110716140929/http:
//www.chicagomaroon.com/2005/10/3/kass-leaves-post-as-bushs-bioethics-chair) 2011-07-16 at the Wayback
Machine," Chicago Maroon, February 12, 2005.
29. Leon R. Kass, Foreword to Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (Washington: President's
Council on Bioethics, 2003).
30. Leon Kass, interviewed by Adam Wolfson, The American Enterprise, July 2006.
31. Leon R. Kass, "The Wisdom of Repugnance," The New Republic, June 2, 1997.
32. Leon R. Kass, "A Way Forward on Stem Cells (http://www.aei.org/article/22828)," Washington Post, July 12, 2005.
33. Erika Check Hayden and Monya Baker, "Virus-Free Pluripotency for Human Cells," Nature 458, no. 19 (March 1,
2009).
34. Ryan Anderson, "The End of the Stem-Cell Wars (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000
/014/387asfnv.asp)," The Weekly Standard, December 3, 2007.
35. Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson, The Ethics of Human Cloning (http://www.aei.org/book/73) Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20090716081830/http://www.aei.org/book/73) 2009-07-16 at the Wayback Machine
(Washington: AEI Press, 1998).
36. Fritz Allhoff, Telomeres and the Ethics of Human Cloning (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15186685)
(American Journal of Bioethics, 2004 Spring;4(2):W29-31).

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37. Martha Nussbaum, “Danger to human dignity: The revival of disgust and shame in the law,” The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 50(48): B6
38. Kass, Leon (May 2001). "L'Chaim and Its Limits". First Things.
39. Kass, Leon (Winter 1972). "Making Babies: The New Biology and the 'Old' Morality". The Public Interest.
40. Kass, Leon (Winter 1979). " 'Making Babies' Revisited". The Public Interest.
41. Kass, Leon (1985). "chapter 10–13". Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs. New York: Free
Press. ISBN 0-02-918340-5.
42. Kass, Leon (1994). The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster.
ISBN 0-226-42568-1.
43. http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/leon-kass-transcript/
44. Leon Kass, "Looking for an Honest Man: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist” (http://www.neh.gov/whoweare
/Kass/Lecture.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090525094803/http://www.neh.gov/whoweare
/Kass/Lecture.html) 2009-05-25 at the Wayback Machine, text of 2009 Jefferson lecture at NEH website (retrieved
May 22, 2009).
45. "Leon Kass, noted humanities scholar and bioethicist, to deliver the 2009 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities"
(http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20090323.html), NEH press release, March 23, 2009.
46. Serena Golden, "Tough Love for the Humanities" (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/22/kass), Inside
Higher Ed, May 22, 2009 (retrieved May 22, 2009).
47. http://hudson.org/research/11535-amy-a-kass-1940-2015

External links
Leon Kass's profile at the Committee on Social Thought's website (https://web.archive.org/web/20090517061802
/http://socialthought.uchicago.edu/faculty/leon_kass.shtml)
Kass's profile at the American Enterprise Institute's website (http://www.aei.org/scholar/67)
Kass's profile at the President's Council on Bioethics website (https://web.archive.org/web/20050826014340/http:
//www.bioethics.gov/about/kass.html)
Appearances (https://www.c-span.org/person/?leonkass) on C-SPAN

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