Now, as for bioethics and philosophical
 bioethics in Finland, first of all, 
there are gaps in philosophy. The 
philosophical community, I think it's safe to 
say, in all Nordic countries, is very 
much divided into either you do 
continental philosophy or you do analytic
 philosophy. And moral philosophy, 
which bioethics is seen as part of, is 
based... is very much done on analytic 
grounds. And bioethics and applied ethics
 has a very poor reputation in the 
philosophical community. It's considered
 as bad philosophy usually. It's not 
proper philosophy, it's seen as like 
people are just saying what they think 
about it and it's not... like proper 
philosophy is a kind of exegetical work 
where we try to find out what the hell
 Hegel was saying. (laughter) And part of 
the reason is that the most well-known 
bioethicists have started their work on 
utilitarian grounds or utilitarian premises, 
 or at least utilitarianism has 
provided the framework for doing applied
 philosophy, so Peter Singer and John 
Hares have been kind of the most discussed
 philosophers and their arguments. I
 don't know if you know Mate Hayry and 
Tolbe Tannsjo, is a Swedish philosopher,
 quite well-known in Europe. And all 
these guys are considered as utilitarians
 and utilitarianism is often seen as an 
intellectually kind of cheap theory. And 
Peter Singer especially has a very poor 
reputation as a philosopher in Finland, 
he's not considered as a good philosopher, 
 which I think is partly true and 
partly it's just unfair. He's not as 
bad as people say he is. 
 (laughter)
So, I don't know whether I should go 
into these... how much time do I have left? 
Ok, I'll just skip this... but in 
general, the arguments used for preventing 
impairments and especially preventing
 the existence of people with impairments 
is justified on two grounds: either on
 the grounds of impairment is seen to 
compromise people's well-being. So, 
selective abortion is in the best interest 
of the future child. So that's one way
 to think about it. And the other reason 
is to avoid burden to the family or to
 the parents or to society. Now burden to 
society, no politician in their right 
mind would say publicly and openly that 
let's abort these fetuses to avoid 
financial burden. A few years ago, ten years 
ago, it leaked in public that in one 
hospital or two hospitals, some doctors had 
collected, made statistical analysis, 
how much we have saved money with the help 
of these selective abortions. And of 
course, it was very embarrassing, because 
that kind of... it's not seen as a 
politically very correct thing to do and of 
course nobody wanted to have anything 
to do with that kind of a thing.
As for the disability movement, the 
disability movement in Finland is 
politically quite moderate, especially
 if you compare to England, for instance,
 where it's quite aggressive. Disability
 movement does usually regard selective 
abortion as expressing a hurtful 
message, so they appeal to the expressive 
argument. But, also they really don't... 
 what is seen as problematic is that 
these practices and pre-natal genetic 
testing is that it's seen as directive and 
even coercive. As Dick said, that the 
information provided is one-sided or even 
biased. But people don't really want 
to prohibit the chance for tests or 
selective abortion. So the ideas of 
reproductive freedom and autonomy are seen 
as invaluable principles. And the 
disability movement in Finland has kind of an
 attitude toward the scientific community
 that they respect the scientific 
community and what they have told me 
is that "it's quite ok for you to do 
whatever you want to do and write 
incomprehensible philosophical analysis of the 
meaning of the concept of disability, 
 for instance, we don't care, that's fine, 
but occasionally, you might want to 
consider doing something that is actually of 
use." And I think that's a fair attitude
 (laughter) and I can accept that. So, 
in general we are, Fins are not very 
passionate people, we are quite even-
tempered as it was stated in... unless
 when we get drunk and that's quite often 
(laughter). So, there's not a lot of 
hassle about this. So I suppose that's 
pretty much all that's going on there. 
 (laughter)
