StemPAC, the media and even some opponents of embryonic stem cell research often frame the controversy in the language of “rights”. As the controversy is usually depicted the “right to life” of the embryo opposes the “right to a healthy life” of the sick child. Within this frame the ultimate question then becomes “Whose life is of greater moral worth, the embryo or the sick person?” Such a framing is a dead end for all of us; it leaves us stuck in a moral morass.
Rather than ‘competing rights’ the heart of this issue is really over the dehumanization of humanity.
But let’s be very clear about what that means. Being sick, suffering and even dying do not, in any way, make a person less human. My neighbor with cancer is not less of a human because of the illness she suffers from. A person with Parkinson’s does not become less and less human as the disease progresses. And death, rather than dehumanizing, is, in truth, one of the defining characteristics of our humanity. These things, as awful as they are, are part and parcel of being human. In a very true way, and a way that is often impossible to articulate, suffering is also a hallmark of being human. Suffering never dehumanizes us, rather, it is how people treat us that leads to dehumanization.
In that respect, creating a class of humans whose sole function will be to act as objects of our will is the very definition of dehumanizing. It is especially bothersome when that class is made up of embryos- the very beginning of human life. When we manufacture and manipulate the beginning of human life to make it serve our ends we are forever changed. No society that allows such use of humans can remain free from the dehumanizing effect. If we become logically and morally comfortable with destroying “left-over” five-day old blastocysts from IVF clinics, what will stop us from creating embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them? What will logically stop us from doing the same thing to 15-day-old embryos or 90-day-old fetuses? How will we stop the train? In a very real way our freedom is lost. Once we become comfortable with the dehumanization of one group of people, we are all dehumanized.
And that, I believe, is how the debate should be framed. Are we willing to endure our loss of freedom, our dehumanization to a science that demands to be served by man rather than serving man? As Leon Kass put it “Engineering the engineer as well as the engine, we race our train we know not where.”
Bravo! Well said.
agreed...great thoughtout article
As my Parkinson's disease progresses I become less human, not more. There is nothing noble in your medieval view of suffering. You just have not done much of it. I also resent your cavalier attitude re a woman dying of cancer. I survived ovarian cancer, but have lost two friends to it.
You simply prefer potential life to actual life. An undifferentiated microscopic cell is more important to you than my life and those who suffer every moment.
Your slippery slope argument is a red herring. Hisotrically, we have been experimenting on embryos for many years, dating back to the 18th century. Has that "dehumanized" us? I think not.
An embryo is not a potential life. An embryo is human from the beginning and alive from the start. You may more accurately state that it is a life with potential. But here we get into a moral calculus again that in the end does not move the debate much beyond who has the greater worth. Neither has a greater worth than the other -- both are INESTIMABLY VALUABLE. Your life is NOT less valuable than the embryo, but by objectifying and using the embryo as “spare parts” in a very real way ALL human life becomes devalued, yours and mine included.
As a side note, it is very presumptuous to assume the degree of suffering that others have experienced.
We've been experimenting on live human embryos since the 18th century? Really? I'll eat my words if you can show me where you got that from!
Meanwhile, as far as I am aware, we have only been creating and experimenting on live human embryos since the second part of the last century.
Nothing wrong with a slippery slope argument. All I am saying is that the logic that takes us from point A to point B can also take us through to point C and D without having to stop and rethink.