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 atrick Lee and
Robert P. George in
their criticism of my Reason online article, "Are
Stem Cells Babies?," quite properly insist that dissecting a
human being for spare parts is "grotesquely immoral." However, they
are wrong when they claim that obtaining embryonic stem cells for
medical treatments is such a case.
Lee and George argue that my claim that there is no morally significant
difference between skin cells and human embryonic stem cells is
fallacious on two grounds: First, that the different potentialities
of skin cells and embryos makes them morally different, and second,
that human embryos are already "persons."
Let's take the second argument first because if embryos are already
human beings then the notion of "potentiality" as conferring any
moral significance on them is simply irrelevant in the first place.
We all agree that one cannot kill human beings for spare parts.
Lee and George maintain that "it will not do to say that human [embryos]
are "not 'persons.' You and I are essentially human, physical organisms.
That is, we do not have organisms; we are rational,
animal organisms. Therefore, we — that is, the persons we are
— come to be precisely when the animal-organisms we are come
to be. The human person is a bodily entity — not a mere consciousness
using a body — and so the human person comes to be a conception."
Of course, we are physical organisms and of course our organisms
began at conception. That life begins at conception is a truism
— no conception, no life. But that truism cannot tell one the
moral status of that life. The question is were we people when we
were embryos? The answer is no. Why? Insights about how we define
the end of human life shed considerable light on what constitutes
the beginning of human life. We used to declare people dead when
their hearts stopped beating, until new biomedical advances forced
us to think more carefully about what we mean when we say someone
is dead. We now know that a body (a physical organism) may still
breathe, its heart beat, and its stomach digest, but the person
whose body it was is well and truly "brain dead." Thus technological
advance has focused our attention on the central fact that we exist
only if our brains are still working. If our brain activity ceases
— our thoughts, memories, emotions, and intentions cease —
we have ceased to be.
Therefore, it is widely agreed that it is permissible to dissect
"brain dead" bodies for their spare parts. In fact, donating one's
organs via one's will is generally regarded as a moral act, worthy
of great approbation. Like brain-dead bodies, embryos consisting
of 100 or so cells have no minds, memories, or intentions. Indeed,
they have no brains, nor even any nerve cells. Consequently, since
we do define "persons" as the sort of entities that do have brains
capable of sustaining a mind, embryos clearly don't qualify. Despite
Lee and George's claim to the contrary, it will do to say that embryos
are not "persons" in the commonly understood meaning of that word.
Ah, but they could qualify, if they were allowed to fulfill their
potential, Lee and George argue in their first line of attack. "The
potentiality possessed by each of our cells differs profoundly from
the potentiality of the human embryo," they claim. They base their
distinction on the notion that all a single cell embryo needs is
the "right environment to develop to a mature stage of a human being."
Lee and George go on to argue that a skin cell "needs more than
the right environment to develop to a mature stage of a human being."
Here, Lee and George are begging the question. They arbitrarily
restrict their notion of the "right environment" to there being
a womb into which an embryo can implant.
In fact, when one looks further into the biochemical details of
human development, the "right environment" is actually human egg
cytoplasm, e.g., the substances outside an egg's nucleus. Egg cytoplasm
has factors that can turn on the DNA recipes derived from either
a combination of gametes (fertilization) or from somatic cell nuclei
like those from skin cells (cloning) and begin the process that
could lead to the development of a human being. Given this "right
environment" skin cells as well as embryos could become human beings.
But let's peer further into the future of likely biomedical progress.
Many researchers including former director of the National Institutes
of Health, Harold Varmus think one day that recourse to egg cytoplasm
will no longer be necessary to turn on the DNA recipes for making
a human being. Whatever the factors found in egg cytoplasm are for
turning on DNA recipes will become known and researchers will be
able to apply them directly to somatic cells. The "right environment"
will no longer involve human eggs at all. One could imagine a set
of off the shelf protein factors with directions reading: Apply
to skin cell; implant in womb; and wait nine months. Or in the alternative,
apply to skin cell, wait seven days, derive stem cells, cure patient.
Another thought experiment helps illuminate the question of whether
embryos are people or not. Imagine a skin cell whose DNA switches
are being flipped one at a time in the proper order so that it is
being taken back to the embryonic state. There is now only one more
methyl group to remove from its DNA strands and the cell will be
able to begin embryonic development. Does that cell's status as
a person depend on the presence or absence of that one bit of methylation?
Scientific and technological developments like cloning shift our
view from thinking of a single cell embryo as being "profoundly
different" to being merely further along a newly accessible sequence
of potentiality than are somatic cells. What once seemed like an
unbreachable natural barrier has fallen and that changes our understanding
of the world. Which then brings me back to Australian bioethicist
Julian Savulsecu's conclusion that "If all our cells could be persons,
then we cannot appeal to the fact that an embryo could be a person
to justify the special treatment we give it."
I don't claim to know precisely when human life begins, but it certainly
begins well after the blastocyst stage of embryonic development.
Therefore I conclude that creating and using human embryonic stem
cells to treat sick people is not immoral.
Finally, I want readers to keep in mind that the above discussion
is not intended to nor does it address the politics surrounding
the desirability of federal funding for human-embryonic-stem-cell
research. Nor does it weigh the medical merits of adult-stem-cell
research versus embryonic-stem-cell research. I simply answer in
secular terms the question of whether research on human embryonic
stem cells is moral or not. I know full well whom those readers
who accept that God through his anointed representatives has told
them that embryos are babies will believe. At the risk of being
presumptuous, I still hope that the light that science sheds on
this issue will lead faith communities to come to a different understanding
one day. In the meantime, I hope that other readers not so persuaded
by their faith will find my arguments enlightening and useful.
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