This week, some big thinkers about biotechnology came to Washington for a "progressive bioethics summit." They invited me to go and talk to them.

At most liberal bioethics conferences, the main question in dispute, in one form or another, is whether to be more afraid of capitalism or religion.

For the past several days, while eating lunch at my desk, I've been watching video of the liberals at a conference they held last year. I know, I need to get a life. But the video is kind of poignant. It shows a bunch of nerds commiserating about being beaten up by a gang of bullies. The bullies, according to the nerd movie, are Bush-appointed neoconservative bioethicists who do the bidding of the Christian right.

I like having the freedom to soak my head in a new topic and come out saying the opposite of what I expected. Committing to a political identity would just get in the way.

Not everything that's legal is moral. The most interesting moral questions aren't the ones you can settle with simple rules. They're the subtle ones you find in literature and real life.