Bioethics, the rules that keep medicine and research accountable to human dignity, was born out of the postwar international order, and that order is now under strain. In Absolutely Essential (MIT Press, 2025), Jonathan D. Moreno shows how deeply science and politics have always been entwined, from the Nuremberg Code to today’s battles over trust in experts. Reviewing the book for LSE Review of Books, Yelena Biberman argues that a “good enough” bioethics won’t hold in an age of biotech rivalry. What we need is a framework built by and for the whole world. Read more here.