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I work in the area
of bioethics in the United States. I am senior fellow at the Family Research
Council. I am the moderator of today’s panel, and I will introduce our other
three speakers in a few minutes. First, however, I would like to begin by
“setting the stage,” as we say in America, by giving you what I believe are five
threats to the dignity of the human person as a result of biotechnology.
First, there is
the redefinition of the human embryo. As most of you know, and as science, so
far at least, has unanimously affirmed, a human embryo is a human being. Human
life begins as a single cell, called a zygote. It can come into existence by
ordinary human sexual intercourse, in which case it results from the fusion of a
sperm cell with an oocyte or egg cell, or, apparently, by cloning or a similarly
artificial means. However, in any case, it is a human being. Every human being
begins as a single-celled human embryo. “Embryo” simply describes the first two
months of a human being’s life, i.e., it is the first stage of human
development.
Now, science can
tell us that much. In other words, science is a mode of inquiry, a way of
knowing, that is designed to tell us things – to give us facts – about the
material word – where, when, what, etc. Thus, science is perfectly situated to
tell us when human life begins (though it is beyond science’s ability to tell us
anything about the supernatural, including when and if the soul fuses or enters
the body).
What science can
tell us is important, even if limited. But currently there is a movement to
deform science, to keep it from accurately telling us the things it is capable
of telling us. There is a move to “re-define” the “embryo” so that it does not
begin at the first instance but “later.” Of course, if it begins “later,” then
there is a period of time when it could be dismembered without killing a human
being.
If this happens,
then science has been bent to the whim of “politics.” This perversion of
science is threat #1.
The second threat
is turning children into products. Together genetic engineering, genetic
screening, cloning and in vitro fertilization will allow us to make children as
we see fit. We can “design-in” certain qualities, and remove others. We can
reject (abort) the unborn whom we deem to be defective. (In the US today,
one-third of Down syndrome babies are aborted; the figure in Europe is between
20 to 40,000 per year.)
Thus, we convert
human life from a gift from God into a product of our will. What do you do with
a product that does not work, one that you buy from a store? You either throw
it away or return it for one that suits your wishes. This is the complete
commodification of human beings.
The third threat
is the abandonment of ethics.
Human begins
learned some valuable lessons from the maelstrom of the Second World War. Those
lessons are embodied in the Nuremberg Code. The Code states that it is wrong to
engage in research that kills a human being. Yet, human embryonic stem cell
research and human cloning does precisely that. Nonetheless, our societies are
in danger of so fully embracing these practices as to make them new
“industries.” If so, we will have forgotten the hard-won, hard-learned lessons
of centuries of abuse of human life.
We do this because
we are becoming very self-centered people. We are chiefly interested in
satisfying our own wishes and desires. We are losing touch with our obligations
to others, with our responsibilities to society. This s the “triumph” of a
certain philosophical outlook, even if not recognized as such by its
practitioners. Radical individualism is its name, and it is the fourth threat.
Now, you might
expect people to, as we say in America, “come to their senses” about all this –
about the politicization of science, the commodificaiton of human life, the
abandonment of ethics, and the emergence of truly radical individualism – but, I
think, you would be wrong. And the reason is due to the fifth threat, and it is
the most dangerous of all.
In his
commencement address at Harvard college, Nobel prize-winner, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, noted that there no “good people” and “bad people.” Rather, the
“line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”
Yet, today, at
least in the West, we have lost sight of that valuable insight. We think there
are good and bad people. And the leaders into “the brave new world” of
biotechnology think they are the good people. They can be trusted. Even when
they pervert the meaning of ethics, as is being proposed in Norway where
embryo-destructive research is being proposed “under strict legal and ethical
controls,” they fail to realize what they are doing. They have a false
consciousness, an ideology, which blinds them. They can no longer recognize the
truth. |
