Part II: The Ethics of the Early Life Issues
4. The Case for a Pro-Life View of Embryo Research
“Our conviction about what is natural or right should not inhibit the role of science in discovering the truth,” Prime Minister Tony Blair responding to critics of Britain’s plan to clone human embryos for research.
The quote above encapsulates the problem of the vast gulf between the moral assumptions of the great majority of people and those of the ruling elites. To most adults, trained from their earliest childhood in traditional moral concepts, if a thing is unnatural or wrong, it cannot be done.
But the idea that a “conviction about what is natural or right” is irrelevant and should be set aside like old cultural baggage in the name of progress is one that is held by the great majority of the classes that operate government, academia and the media. This notion is the single most obvious result of the vast philosophical shift in our culture away from traditional, objective and rational philosophies.
Prime Minister Blair was Britain’s head of government for the ten years during which Britain led the world in abandoning traditional moral foundations in medical and research ethics through the decisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. His statement, which to those habituated to traditional moral concepts is an absurdity, is typical of the opinions voiced in the British House of Commons, in the Canadian Parliament and legislatures around the world, and in the meetings of international associations of bioethicists and researchers.
American pro-life apologist and lecturer Scott Klusendorf, using classical principles of logic, concluded that if Blair’s statement were to be taken to its logical conclusion, then “scientific progress trumps morality, [and] one can hardly condemn Hitler for grisly medical experiments on Jews”[1].
It is possible to cut through the Gordian Knot of modern philosophical assumptions with some straightforward principles. These have been laid out by Klusendorf who has made a life work of training people in a method of argument based on classical philosophy and rhetorical principles. Klusendorf’s methods were developed when answering the pro-abortion claims, but are equally applicable to the issue of embryo research and cloning.
The entire pro-life argument can be made simply with the following syllogism:[2] “It is wrong to kill an innocent human being; the unborn are innocent human beings; therefore abortion, which kills the unborn, is wrong.”
If the first two premises are granted or proved, the conclusion logically follows. Precisely the same syllogism and argument can be made against any form of embryonic experimentation, which has caused the deaths of uncountable millions of embryonic human beings.
“You can’t kill people to solve your problems” – Clarifying the issue and making the rational argument [3]
“It is wrong to buy, sell, donate, kill, experiment upon or otherwise treat human beings as chattel; human embryos are human beings; therefore embryo research is wrong.”
1) The first premise of the syllogism above, “It is wrong to kill an innocent human being,” is the foundation of the argument. Once the first premise is agreed, the second must be demonstrated. In the first section of this document, the case is made clearly for the complete humanity of the human embryo. If it is accepted, according to Natural Law principles, that a human being and a human person are indistinguishable, the conclusion must follow.
If a human embryo is a human being, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. No appeal is possible to the potential therapeutic benefits of treating him as chattel and using him in medical experiments. A human being cannot be used as an instrument.
S.L.E.D.
“There is no morally significant difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today.[4]” Scott Klusendorf.
The differences between a person in the embryonic stage and an adult are what are referred to in philosophy as “accidental”. They are differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency. These can easily be recalled by memorizing the mnemonic acronym “SLED”.
Size: Embryos are smaller than newborns and adults, but this does not affect their nature as human. Only a fundamental, “ontological” difference is relevant to the question. If the embryo is a human being, we cannot kill it or treat it as an instrument, even at the first, single-cell stage.
Level of development: Every human being at a different levels of development, physical, social, emotional or economic is still a human being. Older children do not have more rights than their younger siblings. The rights of a human being to protection under the law cannot be dependent upon cognitive function, age, or any ability. If rights are to have meaning, they must be immune from arbitrarily assigned criteria.
Environment: The embryo’s location, either in a lab or in a uterus, does not affect its human nature. Human nature is not changed by any external situation.
Degree of Dependency: It is often argued that human beings must be fully independent in order to qualify as persons. But all human beings are dependent to greater or lesser degrees on their environment. We need air, food, shelter, clothing, the protection of a family and community and the law. The degree to which we are independent as adults can change in a moment. It is not logical, therefore, to say that a sudden change to a greater or lesser degree of dependency makes any change in the inherent nature of the person.
The Rustling Bush
A common method of teaching ethics is to examine hypothetical situations and allow students to discuss them. One of these is called “The Rustling Bush.”
Two hunters are out in the woods and move a short distance from each other, out of sight. One of the hunters sees a bush rustling. He wonders if he should shoot. The rustling may be caused by a deer or by his friend.
According to many abortion advocates and their imitators proposing to create and use human embryos for research, he should shoot on the grounds that he cannot be certain, it is not known, if the bush-rustler is a deer or his friend, a human being.
The argument is frequently made that it is unknown at what point a human person or a human being begins, or at what point “human life” begins. The question, however, is irrelevant when the intended act is one that might harm the entity or cause its death.
Classical Natural Law ethics always chooses in favour of even the slightest possibility of human life and forbids the hunter to shoot, and equally, forbids an abortionist from aborting and genetic researchers from continuing their experiments with embryos. If there is the slightest possibility that a human being may be present, the dangerous or destructive act cannot be done.
The Nuremberg Code – Consent and medical benefits
Traditional ethics also requires that if experimentation is done on a human being, no matter what stage of development, there must be some benefit to the subject and the subject must consent.
The Nuremberg Code was accepted by the scientific world after the revelations of Nazi atrocities using interned prisoners for medical experiments. It laid down the requirements for using human subjects in medical research that have been accepted around the world.
The articles of the Nuremberg Code include:
“Voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”
and
“No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.”
and
“During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.”
The embryonic human being cannot give consent and cannot end the experiment. It is usually argued that embryonic research is ethical because the “donors” or parents of the embryo give consent. But no parent can give legal consent to have a child used in medical experiments if the unavoidable result will be the death of the child.
[2] Syllogism: An argument consisting of three categorical propositions, two serving as premises and one serving as a conclusion. “All cats are mammals; my pet is a cat; therefore, my pet is a mammal,” is an example of a valid syllogism.
[3] This section is adapted from a pair of articles by Scott Klusendorf. “How to Defend Your Pro-Life Views in 5 Minutes or Less” and “Is Embryonic Stem Cell Research Morally Complex?” http://prolifetraining.com/Pro-Life_Articles.htm
[4] Scott Klusendorf “Is Embryonic Stem Cell Research Morally Complex?”
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