Peter Wall, requested that I formulate my arguments against treating nascent human life casually. In his post, he writes
As I have pointed out many times, that statement is only meaningful if you can explain why deliberately creating and destroying human embryos is itself morally corrupt.
and
Can anybody point me to a better argument? Until it can be shown why destroying a human embryo is morally wrong, I see no reason why cloning or stem cell research should be considered immoral.
I had suggested he recall (or read) Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (one side note, I can’t locate my copy of Mr Huxley’s little novella, my wife is picking one up from the library tonight to be used later essays). His replied that he didn’t really see the connection. This is just a start on a reflection on this matter, so I’m going to begin with the dreaded bullet points, and try to organize my thoughts for a later essay, but this will give Mr Wall, and anyone else, something to poke darts at in the meantime. And as I suspect they will fall on deaf ears, I will for the nonce eschew any theological arguments.
- Mr Huxley’s story tells of a society built with no regard for embryonic life. In that story toward the beginning we are immersed in the society which has emerged. Stabilty, pleasure, and the surcease of pain are the highest good for man as seen by this society. Individuality, creativity, the nuclear family and the value of emergent life were not just unsupported, they were seen as essential impediments to those things they identified as good. In fact, their experimentation on ermergent life was a key part to their methods for acheiving their goals. The 68 cent question is whether that facet, that is the idea that the stuff of men is like any other industrial product to be molded as we will … and once molded what we “will” will be molded by the molders forever more. Can a casual regard for experimentation on humans at any stage of development be morally neutral? And is the emergent fetal stage the most vulnerable to that same experimentation?
- Most men, and I would I hope include Mr Wall in that grouping, find experimentation on human and eugenic slaughter as was practiced by the Nazis as abhorrent and repellent. Why is that? Yet, eugenics are now being practiced on nascent, embryonic human life all the time in our world today. Rare and rarer is it today that a Down’s child is born, as this can be detected with a pre-natal DNA test. In India and elsewhere females become rarer for the same reason, by ultrasound or DNA a fetus can be sexed and if “inappropriate” aborted. As our tests become more and more predictive, how many more tests might we use to filter our children. Will we love a child born who slips through the mesh, or sue for malpractice? How will that same child, born with the wrong color eyes perhaps or not as tall or fast or smart or having the “wrong sexuality” feel loved by his parents? Are you, my gentle reader, so sure that given finder and finer control of what tests are possible sure that you would be aborted or not? How about your friends? What limits can we place on that genie once let out of the bottle (and out of the bottle it has already slipped). Can it be put back in?
- One more note on the above, genetic diversity is one of the linchpins, I am given to understand, of judging the fitness of a species and necessary for its continued survival. If fashion dictates our young, will diversity surivive?
It’s late, and this is a paltry list. I will endeavor to continue this anon.
It’s ironic that embryonic stem cells are the excess of attempts to build nuclear families despite nature’s (God’s?) efforts to stop the infertile. They are the excess of the desire for more life.
Incidentally, the essence of BNW is hierarchical control and hyper-industrialization; the status of embryos is a side effect, not a cause, of its narrative arc. Fetuses are bathed in alcohol to be kept sufficiently stupid and create a permanent working class to serve the Alphas. The novel is prophetic, but not prophecy.
There is no reason why “individuality, creativity, the nuclear family and the value of emergent life” belong together in that list of impediments to pleasure, except for arbitrarily putting them there. So long as we are discrete individuals with unique thoughts and perspectives, individuality will not go away. So long as we have individuality, creativity will not go away. The nuclear family has already gone away, if it ever existed. Emergent life is valuable; but we’re talking about relative valuation, not absolute valuation: most of the time, established life will trump emergent life. As to whether those things impede pleasure, I think Huxley was out of his mind. I derive more pleasure from those things than from almost anything else and I support embryonic stem cell research, genetic engineering, and anything that will make humans better than they already are.
This fear of molders and molding and being something new and outrageous that results from scientific experimentation is ridiculous. Culture has already taken our species along a strange and wonderful path of molders molding themselves and their future. If we can, by experimentation, make people who are healthier, stronger, longer-living, smarter, better-looking, and more well-suited to modern life, then we have increased chances for individuality and creativity by removing obstacles.
The Nazi experiments were horrific because they were done on people capable of experiencing and understanding suffering; destroying a little ball of 200 cells without a nervous system is hardly analogous.
Preventing all Downs children would be fantastic. I am all for that.
The number of females in India may be declining because they are not allowing females to be born or to live, but that is not a result of any modern science; it’s an ancient bias that I disagree with no matter how it’s carried out.
Why shouldn’t fashion dictate our young? What’s fashionable? Strong, attractive, intelligent, physically fit people? Oh, dear God, no, not more of those. Please, anything but strong, attractive, intelligent, physically fit people.
Children have already sued for “wrongful life.” Courts have not been sympathetic yet, for a variety of reasons. Not least among them is the problem of proving causation:
If I could ensure that my children were practically perfect in every way, I would, and it’s not your business to stop me, just as it’s not your business to stop me from doing anything else to ensure the success of my own (or anyone else’s) children.
Oh, and another thing:
“How will that same child, born with the wrong color eyes perhaps or not as tall or fast or smart or having the ‘wrong sexuality’ feel loved by his parents?”
You are conflating two impulses: (1) the impulse to make sure your child has the best possible future and (2) the impulse to love your child unconditionally.
Most parents do everything they can to ensure the best possible future for their child and many parents are willing try genetic screening as part of that. But your question suggests that parents who use genetic screening, if they don’t get what they expect, are going to love their child less. That’s utterly ridiculous.
For one thing, parents already get children with defects they didn’t expect. There are many, many parents who hoped for and expected a “normal” child, but instead got a child with a terminal disease, a child with congenital defects, or a child with mental disability. But most of those parents still love those unexpectedly defective children. So analogize the same process to a different level of the ladder, where you have parents who hope for and expect an “above average” child, but instead get a child who is “normal.” What’s the difference? We’re talking about a gradual continuum here.
As well, if you’re going to bar parents from using scientific methods to ensure their children are healthier, more physically fit, more attractive, and so on, are you also going to bar those parents from using economic methods to ensure their children have a better chance in the world? If you can tell one set of parents that they’re not allowed to make sure their child has the best possible genetic material, are you also going to tell another set of parents that they’re not allowed to make sure their child goes to the most exclusive private schools in order to get into the most economically advantageous social networks? Why not?
All of this is about the predetermination of factors of an individual’s through decisions made by his or her parents. But everyone knows that no matter how much determinative power parents try to exert, their children will always find a way to wriggle out of that and be their own unique selves. Biological efforts won’t be any different, unless you believe that your genetic material is so determinative that you can’t escape it. But that’s not only unscientific, it comes with the historical baggage of racism and even nastier ideas.
Peter,
You wrote:
Downs children are happy (unusually so I’m told) empathic and their “lack” is that they aren’t as bright. I’m curious why “intelligence = fitness” morally speaking in your mind. Do you feel less “equal” to those smarter than yourself? Would you, now, have supported your parents ending your life pre-natally because you didn’t make the “intelligence” cut? How about the athletic, looks, height, or other less important criteria? Do you have friends less bright than yourself? Are they less valued? If not, is there a cutoff of intelligence beyond which human life is not worth living?
Oh, btw, I think you misunderstand my position. While you claim that your position is that fetal life is “not worthless”, my position is not that fetal life is “equal to an adult’s” but that it is has significant moral value. Enough that I think that casual use of it for experimentation is not called for. I think your eugenic ideals are idealistic and unwise. I’m bumping more on that to the “top”, but I might not finish that essay until Sunday night (I’m kinda on vacation this week, doing Superweek bike races and between recovery, driving, and all that I’m pretty busy).
By the way, while I’m working on this, can you perhaps work on the reverse. I’ve asked in previous posts, for an argument for why abortion might be justified. Especially one which I can teach my nine year old daughter (who btw loves babies). The only one I’m aware of is one I no longer find compelling (that is ala Hobbes that the state has basically absolute power and can if it may terminate or permit termination of whomever it chooses). Another commenter suggested the “famous violinist” thought experiment, but I don’t find that compelling either as I don’t think a the one evil (a short loss of freedom) is balanced by loss of life.
Regarding Downs children, you are confusing issues.
People with terminal illnesses aren’t less valuable than anyone else, but still we want to cure their diseases. For instance, I have known people with cancer who managed to live uplifting lives despite the disease — and still I favor preventing cancer.
I find it utterly degrading and cruel — andfar more in line with the Huxleyan world you decry — to say that since Downs children can still be subjectively happy, we should not try to prevent their syndrome. Downs children may still be happy, but most of them can never really be independent, can never really do normal things like get married and have children, and many of them will die young. Why promote the existence of a group of people who are functionally and socially handicapped? Wasn’t that one of the themes in Huxley’s book?
(Slightly related — some people argue that Downs children are extra special because they bring joy into the lives of others. Right. So do dogs. I don’t buy that argument for a minute. If people like Downs kids for the same reason they like dogs, then those people are sick.)
There’s a big difference between saying that Downs children who actually exist can still be happy and that the rest of us can still love and care for them and saying that we should try to prevent future children from being affected with their syndrome. Don’t mix those up.
Why are you willing to allow (even advocate) for the existence of Downs children, who lack many advantages you and I have, but apparently are not willing to allow for improvement of the human species in the other direction?
Are you afraid scientists will make a better version of you? You’re the only one here suggesting that people might be excluded. I haven’t said Downs children are less human, or that less intelligent people are less human, or that more physically fit people are more human. That’s your fear, not mine.
But strangely enough, your fear seems to be based on the assumption that people like me are out to exclude individuals from the human family based on innate characteristics over which they have no control. And that assumption seems to flow from the idea that since I don’t recognize a ball of 200 cells as a fellow human being, I therefore must have a whole spectrum of humanity based on biological criteria.
Maybe you could tell me, though, whether you support revoking basic rights from criminals (for instance, keeping felons from voting, not allowing sex criminals to choose where they live, taking life itself away from murderers, etc.) and whether you are not in favor of letting felons and sex criminals and murderers roam about as free as you or I, with all the rights and privileges thereof. Is a man still human after he has raped a 10-year-old girl, served time in prison, and is now unable to choose where to live or otherwise interact with human society?
Jim,
I don’t think you are correct that the treatment of fetal life is merely a “side effect” of the story arc of Brave New World. To quote Mr Huxley,
And the motto of that brave world, “Community, Identity, Stability” … and the one of the “major instruments” to achieve this society is to treat the fetus (and child) as a tool. Huxley identifies eugenics and psychological tools applied to child rearing as key in forming an “ideal” (distopian) society, it seems to me.
Mark,
“Side effect” was a bad choice of words. My point was that the treatment of fetuses arises out of the desire to create stability through a rigid hierarchy, and not the other way around. It’s dysgenics, not eugenics–and not at all like ESCR.
Jim,
And my point, is that either way (eugenic or dysgenic) this is made possible by relegating too little importance or privillege to the unborn, wherein it’s similarity and connection to ESCR lies. But you are wrong on dysgenics vs eugenics as it is in fact eugenics, it’s just that they have a different idea of “good” or the ideal citizen.
For example, in a caricature of Mr Walls world where intellgence is the prime factor in “goodness”, would a janitorial/sanitation engineer be fullfilled and happy with a 180 IQ or even flipping burgers as a teenager? Or perhaps no garbage would get collected … or maybe instead there is a place for non-Alpha’s in this world and intelligence is not a good measure of the worth of man.
Mr Huxlye’s vision might be somewhat mindful of 18th century Virginian ideas of hegemonic liberty?
Peter,
On your reply ala Down’s. The cure you suggest is to kill them. That’s not a cure, it’s eugenic slaughter. You could cure cancer (or poverty) by killing everyone who has untreatable cancer (or is poor), then all cancers will be treatable or poverty might be erased.
I continue developing arguments re eugenics in a new essay.
On your other questions, although I don’t see how they connect with your other arguments. I support the disenfrachisement of felons, registration of sexual offenders, and only partially support the death sentence, that is I think we consider reserving the death sentence to professing Christians (although in a pluralistic society this might be extended to just those who profess belief in a life hearafter).
Peter,
And btw, on the nuclear family. This I think, is “not dead if it ever existed at all”. I’m living in one, and me and my wife descended from same. Visit flyover land sometime, you’ll find that a very many (if not a majority) still hold to their oaths made before Man and God … and find it a good thing.
The cure you suggest is to kill them.
Hello? Did you bother to read what I wrote? The cure I suggest is to figure out a way to use our scientific knowledge to prevent Downs kids from happening, not to kill them after they’re already here.
Peter,
I’m curious how you prevent this illness without destruction of the patient. Unless your propose all pregnancies be IVF (You incurable romantic (!?) and how expensive a proposal might that be) then there is not going to be a “look” at the fetal tissue until much later, at which point in your “rights accumulate with development” viewpoint abortion becomes less and less ethical and more like “preventing birth” is your only cure … which is kinda what you quoted.
If you’re going to point out, that a 12 week fetus is completely dependent on its mother … well so is a 12 week old infant. And a 12 week old infant is a heck of a lot more work to keep alive.
The idea is that you find the genetic markers for Downs syndrome and you don’t allow those fetuses to continue. Whether or not that’s “destruction of the patient” depends absolutely on the argument where this discussion that began: whether or not an embryo or a fetus is a “person” or a “human being.”
You anticipate the wrong argument, though. I don’t think personhood or humanity are defined by dependence. Rather, they are defined subjectively by members of the surrounding community. If you and your wife and your social circle want to identify a particular embryo or fetus as a person, then it is one. If you want to identify it as less than a person, then it is less than a person.
The same goes for full grown adults, which is what I was getting at in a previous comment about the way we treat individuals who have committed heinous crimes, essentially taking away many of the qualities that we otherwise give to human people. There is a whole range of humanity that communities confer upon various individuals, where some are “nonpersons” or “brutes” or otherwise stripped of some level of humanity.
But again, referring to the argument I made on my blog, such diminutions of humanity are allowable absent contrary interests of public policy. So long as we are going to be stripping murderers and rapists (and terrorists and enemy combatants and so on) of their humanity, or aspects of it, then I see no reason why anyone should oppose stripping embryos or fetuses of humanity (or simply not conferring any humanity on them to begin with). These are things we do as a matter of course with adults. There is no reason to make an exception for the unborn.
If you want to make absolute statement that no organism that could be construed as a “member” of the human species should ever be deprived of life, then you are going to have to look at those other issues, too. (As well, you might want to get the Constitution, as it currently allows depriving someone of life — so long as there is Due Process.)