Thus when I say "ethics cannot be separated from biological facts" (7) that is an intuition; and when I say "economics cannot be separated from biological facts" and "economics cannot be separated from ethics" again we have intuitions, all in the context of Global Bioethics (7). The problem of how to validate intuitions is part of the theory of intuition in the work of Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) and of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), not cited here.

My own conclusion is that validation of an intuition comes from communication to a sufficient number of open-minded individuals who at some point have an intuition that the message can be believed. Thus when I say it is right, good and desirable that the human species should survive in acceptable circumstances for another thousand years, indeed, for beyond the upcoming Third Millennium (by our calendar) that is a moral intuition. But if we accept that proposition we can ask, is long-term sustainability advanced by having people believe, with Callicott (June 1994), that the Iowa prairie and other remnant prairies have intrinsic value? The question I raise is not "do prairies have intrinsic value?" but "does the belief that remnant prairies have intrinsic value contribute to long-term sustainability and sustainable agriculture?" Beliefs are important because, as virologist and Nobel winner Peyton Rous once said, "What [people] believe determines what [people] do."

I began life in 1911 on a family farm that had grown from an 1882 homestead in northeastern South Dakota to a very successful enterprise by 1907. But by 1934 all the trees were dead and the farm was abandoned after seven crop failures-the seven lean years that were not foreseen. Today a new owner has destroyed the beautiful old home and the other vacant buildings. The site has now been put under cultivation and is part of a cornfield. Is this "sustainable agriculture?"

The concept of global bioethics, by whatever name, will continue to live and challenge us. It needs me no more. Whether the word would have been invented in 1970 or 1971 without my publications is an open question, but there is a more important issue. Why was I so successful writing reports and reviews on cancer research, and so unrecognized in the U.S. when I was began to write about ethical questions? But I refuse to follow Voltaire's character, Candide, who gave up the struggle, saying "Let us till our gardens"? I will continue to write about global bioethics and to plant the seeds of bioethics in my garden.

NOTES

1. Van Rensselaer Potter, "Global Bioethics: Origin and Development." In Handbook for Environmental Risk Decision Making: Values, Perceptions and Ethics. pp. 359-373. C Richard Cothern, Editor. Boca Raton: CRC Lewis Publishers, 1995.

2. __________, "Bridge to the Future: The Concept of Human Progress." Journal of Land Economics 38:1-8 (February 1962).

3. __________, "Society and Science." Science 146:1018-1022 (1964).

4. __________, "Bioethics: The Science of Survival." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 14:127-153 (1970).

5. __________, Bioethics: Bridge to the Future. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall (1971).

6. __________, "Humility with Responsibility-A Bioethic for Oncologists"; Presidential Address. Cancer Research 35:2297-2306 (1975).

7. __________, Global Bioethics: Building on the Leopold Legacy. East Lansing, MI: MSU Press (1988).

8. __________, "Getting to the Year 3000: Can Global Bioethics Overcome Evolution's Fatal Flaw?" Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 34:89-98 (1990).

9. __________, "An Essay Review of Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic, by Hans Kung." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 37:546-550 (1994).

10. __________, "Global Bioethics: Linking Genes to Ethical Behavior." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 39:118-131 (1995).

11. __________, with Lisa A. Potter, "Global Bioethics: Converting Sustainable Development to Global Survival." Medicine and Global Survival 2:185-191 (September 1995).

12. __________, "Global Bioethics: Calling for Humility, the Way of Judge Learned Hand." In manuscript.

13. __________, "Global Bioethics: Moving the Culture Toward More Vivid Utopias with Survival as the Goal." In manuscript.

14. __________, "Organizational Ethics and Behavioral Genetics." In manuscript.

15. __________, "The Future of Global Bioethics: Integrating Agricultural, Environmental, Medical and Religious Ethics." In manuscript.

16. George Kieffer, Bioethics: A Textbook of Issues (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1979, pp. iv, 370-372.

A RARE, ENDANGERED, AND PHYLOGENETICALLY CRITICAL SPECIES--WHAT TO DO?

Lynn G. Clark

Editor's note: The Forum takes pride in providing pedagogical materials useful in provoking discussion of nonmedical bioethical issues. The following case was written by Professor Lynn Clark of Iowa State University. Dr. Lynn Clark is an associate professor of botany at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on the systematics and evolution of the grasses, particularly the bamboos. Other interests include tropical montane vegetation and biodiversity issues.

The Atlantic forests of coastal Bahia, Brazil, harbor some the greatest diversity of plant life on the planet. Within the last few decades, however, the formerly extensive forests have been reduced to approximately 3% of their original cover due to the cultivation of cacao and other crops. An extremely rare but evolutionarily significant species of the grass family, referred to here as Species X, occurs in these forests. This species is known from only three populations along a 6 km stretch of read in the cacao-growing region of Bahia;at last count in 1994, a total of about 80-100 plants was found in the three populations. One of the populations grows at the edge of a cacao grove, and none occurs within a protected area. It is possible that additional populations of the species occur in the area although botanists have looked for it and not found it. Recent studies have shown that Species X is one of the few existing representatives of the earliest lineages of the grass family;these ancient, broadleaved, tropical forest grasses almost certainly evolved in the Cretaceous and coexisted with the dinosaurs.

Several botanists have visited the natural populations of Species X over the last 20 years, and a few live plants were removed for cultivation in Brazil and the Unite States during this time.


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