 What might explain such recourse to high moral theory? What are the attractions of high moral theory for the bioethicist? Let us consider three important possibilities. First, in bioethics as in everyday life, our routine moral coping skills work often enough. When they do not, though, we need recourse to more structured and systematic moral guidance. On these occasions, high moral theory, such as consequentialism and deontology, looks helpful and attractive. Besides offering guidance, such theory provides the resources for moral justification, especially helpful when we are pressed to explain our bioethical or everyday moral decisions. Second, when we appeal to mid-level principles (such as the principle of justice or the principle of beneficence), we sometimes need help in weighing, balancing, and adjudicating between those principles. High moral theory could well provide such help, by providing a form of moral standard. Recall Sidgwick’s argument in support of utilitarianism, that it could provide guidance in resolving conflicts among ordinary duties that everyday (non-theoretical) moral thinking cannot resolve on its own (Sidgwick 1874). In a similar vein, Martha Nussbaum defends the need for moral theory in part by emphasizing what she takes to be its power in helping us weigh various rules against each other in varying circumstances through its setting of a normative standard (Nussbaum 2000). Third, high moral theory can help us achieve consistency in our moral lives, as well as a systematic perspective. There is benefit, the thought goes, to bringing moral theory to bear upon various facets of our ordinary and bioethical lives, because of the systematicity and coherence it can provide. Bernard Gert is one for whom such systematization, at least within bioethics, takes priority (Gert, Culver, &amp; Clauser 2006).