By Steve Wagner
Stand to Reason
Summary
With its publication of “Cure Me If You Can” by Michael Kinsley, Reader’s Digest (with an estimated 12,000,000 readers) has entered the debate about embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). In his article, Kinsley argues that research on embryos should not only be allowed by the federal government (as it currently is) but should also be aggressively promoted with federal tax dollars. This response to Kinsley’s article shows why he is mistaken about ESCR and helps the reader develop a consistent, well-reasoned position on the morality of ESCR. (Posted in September 2003)
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In the moving article, “Cure Me If You Can” (Reader’s Digest, August 2003), Michael Kinsley advances a popular-level defense of embryonic stem cell research. One need read no further than the title, though, to find a major flaw in Kinsley’s thesis. He is asking us to cure him “if we can.” Does he mean we should pursue the end of curing him no matter what the means? The title shows confusion about which question we should answer first when searching for a solution to a difficult problem: the practical question (Does my solution work?) or the moral question (Is it right to use my solution?).
If we use the maxim, “Cure the patient if we can” and answer only the question, “What cure will work?” we leave open to us a whole range of immoral options. For example, to help a patient with a bad heart, we might look around and find a mentally disabled human being with a very strong heart. Killing the disabled man to use his heart for the sick patient is a solution that works, but we recoil at this solution and reject it. Why? Because we rightly ask the moral question before the practical one: Will this solution kill one human being to save another? Many moral failures from history help us remember we must ask the moral question first. Nazi experiments on Jews yielded potentially helpful information, but the debate over whether the results should be used continues to this day.1 The Tuskegee study in Alabama yielded helpful information on syphilis but researchers ignored the suffering of the black patients and lied to them in order to get it. If we want to avoid these mistakes of the past when confronted with troubling diseases, we must ask the moral question first.
With the curing of chronic degenerative diseases like Parkinsons (Kinsley’s main concern), we cannot ask, “Will the cure work?” until we’ve answered a prior question, “Is it right to use the cure?” Kinsley is seeking to promote embryonic stem cell research (ESCR), which always kills a living human embryo in order to do research on its body parts (stem cells) to help a sick patient. And as my colleague Greg Koukl points out, before we can kill any living thing, we must first answer the question, “What is it?” So with ESCR, we cannot ask, “Will ESCR cure the patient?” until we ask, “What is the human embryo that ESCR kills?” If it is not a human being, I agree with Kinsley – do the research, fund the research, and remove all roadblocks from the research. But if the embryo is a human being, we cannot kill her to do research on her body in order to cure Michael Kinsley. Although we want to help Michael Kinsley, this solution is clearly wrong.
So what is the embryo?
After fifteen paragraphs on the difficulty of living with Parkinsons, the mechanics of ESCR, the promise of ESCR, and the political struggle, Kinsley finally begins to answer this basic question, “What is the embryo?”. He says, “[They are] embryos that have been frozen four or five days after the egg has been fertilized. At this point they are microscopic clumps of cells, far too primitive to have a brain or any other body part.” Stop there. We’ve gone far enough. Kinsley is mixing facts and fiction. Certainly the embryo is microscopic – we cannot see its detail with the naked eye. But anytime we discuss a clump of human cells, we must clarify, “What kind of clump is it?” After all, adults are also clumps of cells. So to say the embryo is a clump of cells is unhelpful. What kind of clump of cells is it?
Kinsley has an answer: “[the embryo is] far too primitive to have a brain or any other body part.” He is wrong on the second point. The embryo is not a part of another body, a mere clump of cells, or as some have said, a mere tissue mass. It is a body that exhibits the three characteristics of living things (cellular reproduction, reaction to stimuli, conversion of food for energy). It is a living body that is human, for it has a unique human DNA structure and was produced by two human parents. It is a living human body that is a separate, whole organism, for it needs only a proper environment and nutrition to develop itself through all of the stages of human development. In fact, from conception, the human organism (whether at the zygote, embryo, toddler, or adult stage) has the ability to coordinate its body systems for the healthy functioning of the organism. This is precisely the one characteristic that is lost at death – corpses cannot integrate their living cells and organs any longer.2 But embryos can. Kinsley is right that embryos are too primitive to have a brain. On the other hand, they are so amazing that they don’t need a brain to integrate their body systems for the health of the organism. The evidence is clear, whether Kinsley recognizes it or not. Human embryos are living human organisms. They are human beings.
But are they valuable?
Kinsley’s argument for killing embryos with ESCR implies that they are valuable only for research, not as human beings as such. His justification? “…the embryo is a clump of cells invisible to the naked eye. It has no tiny waving hands and feet, no brain, no sense of self-awareness, no ability to feel pain or love or anything else.” So embryos, although clearly human beings, are not valuable because they lack size, developed body, appearance, and abilities. Why these properties? Has Kinsley chosen them because they are what we use to recognize infants, toddlers, and adults? Why expect the embryo to have the size and appearance of the human being at a later stage? This is unfair. In fact it is just as unfair if we apply Kinsley’s criteria of value consistently. We will have to disqualify those who never had arms and those who lose them through accidents (no tiny waving hands and feet). We will be able to do research that kills infants and those in a reversible coma (undeveloped brain, no self-awareness). Kinsley’s criteria also provide research subjects from any patient under general anesthetic (no ability to feel pain). And if we apply the criteria that a human being must feel love in order to be valuable, we would gain a great number of research subjects from psychiatric wards. Clearly, Kinsley’s criteria are inappropriate for assigning value because each disqualifies human beings we know are valuable. But there is a more serious problem.
Can we ground human rights in acquired properties?
Kinsley marks out the embryo for destruction not because it is not a human being. He marks it out because it does not have certain acquired properties. So he must think human beings as such are not valuable, that only the properties many human beings have are valuable. This makes nonsense of human rights. We have equal rights and deserve equal treatment only because we have something about us that is equal. We treat equals equally and unequals unequally.3 This is why I work hard to keep my paintings safe and care nothing if my trash is hauled away to be eaten by birds. The painting has a characteristic that justifies treating it differently than trash. It is the same with human beings. They have a characteristic that justifies treating them differently than trash, or even a painting. And they have that characteristic equally.
But what is that characteristic? It cannot be an acquired property we can lose and gain, or one we have to a greater or lesser degree. This would justify unequal treatment, probably harsh treatment of those with less of what’s valuable. It would justify treating the small, weak, defenseless, and deformed as trash or punching bags. Peter Singer is right – there is no acquired property we all have equally that justifies equal treatment for all human beings. But Peter Singer is wrong that we don’t have any characteristic that justifies equal treatment – we do. We all have a human nature – we are all human. And we have intrinsic value because of the kind of thing we are. This is clear to us if we reflect for a moment on harsh treatment of humans throughout history – killing of deformed humans, infants, Jews, or Blacks. We know these things were wrong not because some acquired property (appearance or ability) was not being respected. The excuse given by the perpetrators may have been the skin color or inability to think, but this is not what is immediately apparent to us as the reason it is wrong. We know it was wrong simply because it was a crime against humanity. In fact, that is what makes our case against these evils so strong – the perpetrator gave a bad reason for treating a human being like rubbish.
Michael Kinsley’s case against the embryo fares no better. Each of his reasons for treating the embryonic human being as less than human is a bad one. He may respond that his case was meant to be cumulative – his reasons, put together, show the embryo is not valuable. But if his reasons hold no water on their own, how can they do more work when put together? They are like a group of buckets with the bottoms cut out. Because each holds no water on its own, they hold no more water when put together. Kinsley’s case for treating certain human beings as research material fails. Embryonic human beings are valuable because they are human beings, and we should treat them as equals because they have the characteristic that matters: a human nature.
But there are two loose ends we must tie up – and Kinsley mentions one as an argument for killing embryos: they are going to die anyway. Of course, this is not a good reason to kill someone – it would justify killing any of us (we’re going to die anyway) and certainly would justify doing research on the elderly and the death row inmate. After all, they are going to die soon! That embryos will be discarded or washed down the sink does not justify using them for research.4 Rather, we should ask, what is the right solution to this problem of frozen embryos? Clearly, since they are human beings, we must give them the best care and attempt to bring them to birth. Does this sound like fantasy? Not if there are thousands of infertile couples willing to adopt embryos, implant them, and bring them to birth. The excellent Snowflakes adoption program (www.snowflakes.org) and similar programs managed by some fertility clinics are examples of a moral solution to the problem of embryos in storage. But what if these programs did not exist, if there were no way to bring these children to birth? Even then we should not do research on them for the same reason we don’t do research on infants born with fatal defects or the elderly person on his deathbed. Killing the innocent against her will is simply not an option, even if the benefits to society are incredible, because the killing itself is a serious crime against society.
What then of our concern for Michael Kinsley and the millions suffering from diseases? To develop an answer to this final question, we cannot use Kinsley’s approach: “Cure me if you can,” because it is only a more digestible form of the demand, “Cure me even if you have to kill someone else to do it.” Because the embryo is a “someone else,” Kinsley’s approach sounds more like a childish scream than a reasoned request. We must first ask, “What solutions are moral?” before we ask, “What solutions will work?”. The reason has been made all too clear – if we don’t, we’ll kill innocent human beings to do research on their bodies to help a sick patient. We must avoid this at all costs.
But it is encouraging that avoiding a solution for Michael Kinsley is not necessary. There is at least one solution that is moral and he mentions it: adult stem cell research. The cells used in this research are acquired without killing or hurting anyone.5 Certainly, we should promote this research with vigor and public funds. We may not reach a cure as fast as Kinsley or I would like, but at least we won’t do it over the dead bodies of the innocent.
