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 irst,
all people, whether they be in comas, asleep, awake, demented, infants,
or professors of philosophy and jurisprudence, are intrinsically
valuable. Therefore no one may kill them in order to use their body
parts for the benefit of other human beings. It would simply be
evil to do so.
But are embryos
people? Lee
and George reject my
earlier arguments and continue to maintain that embryos are
people and claim that science supports this view. I'm afraid that
what their arguments prove is that when two people peer into the
same petri dish, they are apt to see two very different things.
Previously, I demonstrated that advances in modern science, specifically
the ability to create clones, have shown that there is no morally
relevant difference between embryos and somatic cells. Lee and George
counter by arguing that unlike somatic cells, embryos are "whole
organisms" that are "distinct, complete, self-integrating
human individuals" and further that an embryo "given nothing
more than an hospitable environment, will actively develop itself"
to adulthood.
Let us parse
just a couple of their asserted scientific claims to see how they
stand up. First, Lee and Patrick erroneously claim that I "concede
that an embryo is a distinct organism" actually I "conceded"
that embryos are physical organisms, which is merely to acknowledge
the plain fact that embryos are living cells. That an embryo is
a physical organism tells us nothing more than it is cellular life
— it takes in nourishment and converts it to energy to sustain itself.
Every living cell, including skin cells and bacteria, does this,
so the fact that an embryo is an organism can't confer moral significance
in and of itself.
Lee and George
hang a lot on the claim that embryos are "distinct." But
are they? Science shows us that that is not so. Take the easy case
of identical twins. Since they develop from the same fertilized
egg, their genes are identical. They clearly become "distinct"
sometime after conception. What about the case of human chimeras?
Human chimeras occur naturally when two eggs become fertilized but,
instead of developing into twins, they fuse in the womb, making
a single individual with two distinct sets of genes. Or what about
the increasingly common procedure of pre-implantation genetic testing
of embryos produced using IVF in which a one cell is taken from
a two-cell embryo for testing and the other if implanted in womb
can develop into a baby. Can it be said that pre-implantation testing
kills a twin?
What's interesting
about both twins and chimeras is that they point clearly to the
fact that who we regard as individuals does not depend on "coming
to be at conception" as Lee and Patrick maintain since both
twins and chimeras as individuals clearly "come to be"
sometime after conception. What twins and chimera point to is the
easily discernible fact that individuals are bodies and brains,
not cells that can mix and match and become more than one individual
or fewer than two. Twins also point up the fact that having your
own unique genome is not what makes you an individual; however,
having your own brain and body does. Clearly embryos are not as
"distinct" as Lee and Patrick claim.
Another fact
of science provides some insight here. Embryonic development is
indeed part of a continuum, as we all agree. But proceeding along
that continuum depends crucially on implantation in a womb. No implantation,
no continued development. Embryologists estimate that as many as
50 to 80 percent of all the human embryos created via normal conception
naturally never implant. Keep in mind that this is not miscarriage
we're talking about, the women and their husbands never even know
that conception has taken place, the embryos simply leave the womb
in the menstrual flow. But given Lee and Patrick's insistence that
every embryo is "already a human being," does that mean
that if we could detect unimplanted embryos as they leave the womb,
we would then have a duty to rescue them and try to implant them
anyway? Furthermore, do we mourn the deaths of these millions of
embryos as we would the death of child? No, and reasonably so because
we do in fact know that these embryos are not people.
My contention
remains that science has shown that both skin cells and embryos
are potential human beings which then makes the assertion that they
should be treated as being morally different impossible to sustain.
So how are embryos and skin cells alike? Both take in nourishment
and convert it to energy to sustain themselves. Both replicate their
DNA and divide to produce daughter cells. Both contain the complete
recipe for making a human being. The chief difference is the suppressor
and promoter proteins which decorate their DNA strands.
In response
to my claims, Lee and George countered that skin cells and embryos
are different because all an embryo needs is the "right environment"
to develop, a claim which they reprise by saying in their latest
critique that all an embryo needs is "an hospitable environment."
By "right environment" they mean a womb. However, cloning
shows that drawing the line at that point is arbitrary because combining
the nuclear DNA from nearly any human cell with egg cytoplasm will
start that cell down the path of embryonic development. The "right"
and "hospitable environment" is actually egg cytoplasm.
But Lee and George respond that egg cytoplasm is not an "environment"
but a "co-principle" because the factors in egg cytoplasm
"become part of the new developing embryo."
Again, the
findings of science point another direction. In some recent experiments,
researchers remove the cytoplasm from an egg leaving behind its
nucleus and its cellular membranes and inject that cytoplasm directly
into a somatic cell like a skin cell. Once injected with egg cytoplasm,
the somatic cell is reprogrammed and begins the process of embryonic
development.
In other words,
egg cytoplasm will program the DNA in either the nucleus of a fertilized
egg or a nucleus in a skin cell such that both begin embryonic development.
Both conjoined gametes and the nucleus of a skin cell require egg
cytoplasm to activate their genes' programming toward developing
as embryos. Thus the DNA in conjoined gametes and the DNA in a skin
cell nucleus stand in the same essential relation to one another
— they both need egg cytoplasm to start the development path. In
the future, as former National Institutes of Health Director Harold
Varmus has suggested, the factors in egg cytoplasm that program
cellular DNA for embryonic development may well be isolated and
applied directly to skin cells so that they begin embryonic development
without recourse to egg cytoplasm at all. It turns out that calling
an egg a "co-principle" means nothing more than it simply
has the right suite of proteins to program a cell's DNA so that
it begins embryonic development. As for the fact that cytoplasmic
factors "become part of the new developing embryo," so
too does any nourishment. Is nourishment therefore also a "co-principle"?
My point still
stands:
"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."
In order to
remain consistent, Lee and George maintain that any skin cell treated
with egg cytoplasmic factors (cloning) is an embryo which they claim
is a human being — which brings us back to brains.
With regard
to my arguments about how brain death illuminates our views of who
is and is not a human being, Lee and George accuse me of committing
philosophy to which I will plead guilty — but only in the sense
that I was showing how scientific advances in knowledge shift our
old concepts — like when someone is dead. Technological advances
have 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.
However, Lee
and George object that analogizing brain dead people to embryos
is not acceptable because a brain dead human being is dead while
an embryo is alive.
The issue is
not that one is alive and one is not. In fact, both are alive in
the sense that both can take in nourishment and convert it to energy.
Indeed, there is another similarity, both need the aid of people
outside themselves in order to remain alive, one needs an ICU and
the other needs a willing womb. Lee and George simply ignore the
relevant point that both do not have functioning brains. Because
they do not have functioning brains both embryos and brain dead
people do not have, as Lee and George put it, "the capacity
for reason and free choice" and it is this lack is what puts
them on the same moral plane. What about the comatose, the asleep,
or infants, ask Lee and George, they too don't have the capacity
for "reason and free choice"? Why not just chop them up
for spare parts, too? Again, this misses the other exquisitely simple
point that the comatose, the asleep, and infants, all have more
or less functioning brains — unlike the brain dead and embryos —
which is what makes all the difference morally.
Finally, at
end of their latest critique, Lee and George claim that I "insinuate"
in my earlier response that they hold their views on some "religious
basis." I did no such thing. If they were to bother to read
carefully my response, they will see that my final paragraph was
explicitly addressed to the readers of National Review Online,
many of whom, it will surprise no one to learn, have religiously
based views on this topic (as many e-mails from them to me proved).
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