Archive: Redefining Humanity
Crossing the threshold of embryo experimentation
by Richard John Neuhaus
A panel of 19 experts appointed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recommended federal funding for conceiving human embryos in the laboratory for the purpose of subjecting them to experiments that will destroy them. One confidently expects that most people, upon hearing such a proposal, experience an immediate and strong recoil. That recoil should not be discounted as an irrational reaction. It may signal a deep, intuitive awareness of lines that must not be crossed if we are to maintain our sometimes fragile hold upon our own humanity.
The Washington Post terms the proposal “unconscionable,” and hastens to distance this issue from abortion, noting that support for abortion does not mean “erasing society’s ability to make distinctions.” Creating, using and destroying human embryos cannot be entirely separated from the question of abortion, but one hopes that many who do not oppose legalized abortion will take a stand against this new proposal.
The report of the NIH panel readily acknowledges that we can answer the question of when the life of a human being begins. Science leaves us no choice: It begins at conception. The embryo from the very beginning, we are told, deserves “serious moral consideration,” “moral respect,” “profound respect,” and “some added measure of respect beyond that accorded animal subjects.” Scientists agree that from the earliest moments the embryo has the capacity to articulate itself into what everyone acknowledges is a human being. If someone objects that, at 5 or 15 days, the embryo does not look like a human being, one has only to point out that this is precisely what a human being looks like at 5 or 15 days of development.
Having acknowledged that human life is at stake and that some respect must be paid, the NIH panel has the difficult task of explaining why it is morally right to produce lives in order to use them for lethal experiments. After all, it is one of the most cherished maxims of our civilization that human beings are always to be treated as ends and never merely as means.
The critical questions posed by this proposal are not narrowly scientific. They are ethical and philosophical. The conceptual framework at the center of the panel’s reasoning is that of “personhood.” It switches the question from “When does the life of a human being begin?” to “When does a human being become a person?” Persons, under this construct, are “protectable .” Non-persons or those who are something less than persons are “not protectable.” And how do we decide which human beings are persons and which are not? The report says that “the commencement of protectability is not an all-or-nothing matter, but results from a being’s increasing possession of qualities that make respecting it (and hence limiting others’ liberty in relation to it) more compelling.” More compelling, that is, to those who have the power to decide.
“Personhood” is a venerable concept in theology and philosophy. It is not a scientific concept. As used by the NIH panel, it is an ideological concept in the service of a program aimed at changing dramatically our civilization’s understanding of human life and community. The panel does not shrink from admitting that its “conceptual framework” is revolutionary. In the panel’s view, personhood is a social status that we, who are certified persons, bestow. We decide who will and who will not be admitted to the circle of those who are recognized as persons and are therefore entitled to respect and protection. As protectability increases with an “increasing possession of qualities” that we find compelling, so it follows that protectability decreases with the decreasing possession of such qualities. The conceptual framework embraces the born as well as the unborn.
On behalf of its view, the panel cites approvingly an article by Prof. Ronald Green of Dartmouth, himself a member of the panel, “Toward a Copernican Revolution in Our Thinking About Life’s Beginning and Life’s End.” The article asserts that there are no “qualities existing out there” in any human being that require us to respect him or her as a person.
Bestowing personhood, and hence the right not to be harmed or killed, is “the outcome of a very active and complex process of decision on our part,” according to Mr. Green. In the current language of the academy, personhood is entirely a “social construct.” Whether someone is too young or too old, too retarded or too sick, too useless or too troublesome to be entitled to personhood is determined by a “decision on our part.” Thus we move from embryos in the laboratory to a “Copernican Revolution” in our understanding of human dignity and human rights.
Unfortunately, the American people have not been consulted about, and certainly have not consented to, this revolution. The panel recognizes, however, that this revolution is necessary in order to license, morally and legally, the research that it recommends. How else can you rationalize the abandonment of the principle that human beings are always to be treated as ends and never merely as means?
The report makes much of the “pre-implantation embryo” (implantation in the womb is usually completed by the 14th day after conception). After implantation “a greater measure of respect” is due the embryo, it says. In question, however, for the purposes of the NIH experiments are not pre-implantation embryos but human embryos produced with the intention that they will never be implanted and can therefore be kept alive and experimented upon as long as they are scientifically useful.
In addition, the report makes much of a human being’s “potential for further development.” An embryo that does not have such potential is not protectable, it is argued. Here the reasoning is utterly circular: An embryo is not protectable because it has no potential for further development, and it has no potential for further development because, having determined that it is not protectable, researchers will not permit it to develop further. The ominous questions engaged by the panel deserve more serious thinking than that.
Freezing embryos that are genetically identical to born children in order to use them as a later source for organ transplants, cloning existing human beings, making “carbon copies” of embryos—these and other projects are said to be “inappropriate.”
What is the reason the panel offers why these and other things should not be done and should not be funded by the government? “Throughout its deliberations, the panel relied on the principle that research … is acceptable public policy only if the research promises significant scientific and therapeutic benefits.” Elsewhere we are told that exceptions to the limits proposed should be made only “for serious and compelling reasons.”
The panel claims not to be imposing a philosophy or moral judgment. The claim is false. The philosophy is ordinarily called utilitarianism. Admittedly, the panel’s is a strikingly primitive and vulgar form of utilitarianism, but from that philosophy it derives the moral judgment that the end justifies the means. If there are “serious and compelling reasons,” it seems the end justifies any means.
The panel also arrogates to itself the political responsibility “to arrive at a reasonable accommodation to diverse interests.” That, one might suggest, is the task of politicians and legislatures. Moreover, far from accommodating what it calls “widely different views” on the questions addressed, the panel excluded views other than its own. The chairman announced at the first meeting that it would be “inappropriate” to have people on the panel who oppose the research proposed. As though that were not enough, some of those on the panel were in fact recommending federal funding for their own work. When does an advisory panel become a lobbying group?
Absent vigorous intervention by Congress and public opinion, we are crossing a threshold from which, in all likelihood, there will be no return.
Richard John Neuhaus is the editor-in-chief of First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (156 Fifth Avenue, Suite 400, New York, NY 10010). Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal C 1994: Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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