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How should the moral issues associated with embryonic stem cell research be addressed within religious communities?
With careful and chastened attention to the facts.
The first
requirement for religious communities who want to made some headway on the
ethical questions raised by ESCR is to get their information straight. This
means they have to learn enough about the biology of reproduction, and about
the actual characteristics and developmental trajectory of these very early
embryos, to be clear about what we are dealing with. This includes
understanding the basic structure of the entities under discussion at various
points, and understanding something of the biological programming that directs
them toward the successive stages of their existence. It also requires that we
understand how they fit into their context as part of the living system of the
body, and all the various contingencies that determine whether or not a given
embryo develops, is implanted, comes to term and is delivered some 38 weeks
later. We must take note of all the natural uncertainties that attend the
existence of this very early form of human life, such that it seems that fewer
than half of fertilized embryos successfully survive to implant and begin
development.
This
careful attention to the facts is essential because at least among theistic
traditions, the encounter with material reality is here and everywhere the
encounter with Creation, and thus with the creative intention of God. One broad
and deep strand of Jewish and Christian thought draws upon this identification,
and draws as well upon a notion of the "fittedness" of human
perception and reason to discern something of the divine intention from the character
and ordering of the world we encounter. One need not be a natural law
theologian of full blown Scholastic commitments to recognize that part of how
we discern what is due in justice to a being is to attend to the reality of
that being: its origin, its characteristics and capacities, and the foreseeable
path along which its existence moves. Paying attention to what can be known of
the world is part of how we honor God’s creation, both in the objects of our
attention and in ourselves. As rational creatures we "participate" in
God’s ordering of the world by seeing, knowing and loving that order. Human
understanding is in itself an act of praise and obedience in which we embrace
our distinctive character as images of God.
Having
said all this, it is still important to have a realistic and chastened view of
what such attention will and will not offer us. We cannot go looking for
"moral status" or "value" as if it were a feature we might
locate under a microscope if only we had one powerful enough. Even if our
knowledge of moral standing is partly derived from the facts and character of
existence, it remains a second order judgment. That is, it is something we
construct in response to what we see, and not something we read off as a
characteristic like color or mass or chemical composition. There is no way to
get off the hook of making a kind of judgment about the moral standing of the
early embryo as part of our judgment of the ethics of ESCR. A sound
understanding of the characteristics, natural history and normal development of
that embryo must inform that judgment, but it will never render it unnecessary.
With great care and self-consciousness about the language in
which we make our observations, characterize our findings and frame our
questions.
There are
a number of stakeholders in the public conversation about ESCR, people and
groups who have a particular point of view or a particular conclusion to
articulate and defend. These include those who have a share in the research
itself, and those who face diseases in themselves or loved ones for which this
research holds out some future hope of benefit. It includes likewise those who
have settled moral positions on issues which impinge upon the status of early
human life, in one direction or the other. These people are operating out of
diverse and ultimately unknowable motives. Without attributing any ill will or
intentional deception, it is easy to see the way in which those interests and
conclusions shape the language in which ostensibly neutral information is
conveyed. Here I am not thinking of the most obvious and extreme cases in which
those who oppose using embryonic stem cells characterize their adversaries as
advocating the wanton killing of the unborn, and their opponents speak of those
who care more for blastocysts than for living suffering human beings. I am
thinking of the more subtle judgments enfolded in what purports to be
descriptive language. For example, those who fear the engineering possibilities
of embryonic stem cell research allied to embryo cloning raise the fears of
others by speaking of stem cell research as leading directly to designer
babies. Those who place their hope in future therapies hoped for from these
avenues of research speak about the target maladies as "scourges".
This language, which recalls the great plagues, reinforces the impression that
we face an overwhelming threat, in the face of which the moral qualms about the
destruction of embryos must be put aside in favor of immediate action. Neither
characterization is fair or accurate. If our aim is moral truth on the one
hand, and the formation and protection of Christian conscience on the other, we
will speak with care, and test the content and tone of all speech by the
Pauline norm of what builds up the body.
We must also pay attention to the contexts in which this
question arises and is pursued, and the context in which any answer we offer
will take its effect.
To begin
with, this means acknowledging the peculiar character of the entire
conversation about embryonic stem cell research, which addresses the question
quite as if the embryos we contemplate using as source material had suddenly
been offloaded from space ships. In reality of course, the possibility and the
question of embryonic sten cell research arises only because of a number of
earlier steps we have taken as a society, with more or often less reflection,
debate and deliberation. It is the rapidly growing, unregulated and largely
uninspected reproductive technology industry which produced these so-called
leftover embryos, frequently under conditions which raise both ethical and
scientific questions about their use. But whether we decide we ought to use
these embryos for research or refrain from doing so, the questions they raise
for us all will not go away. If we are at all consistent in our moral thinking
then our deliberations will have profound and perhaps dramatic implications for
how we think, talk and behave regarding biotechnical interventions in general,
and reproductive techniques in particular.
We must
also bear in mind the social and economic framework within which this research
is taking place, what the resources and motives are that lie behind its
development, and what will shape the selection, development and distribution of
any benefits or products that arise from it. Before we wax rhapsodic about the
unlimited potential for curing Parkinson’s or repairing devastating spinal cord
injuries, we do well to remember what products do and do not get made by
pharmaceutical companies who need profits to survive. We need also to pay
attention to who does and who does not receive the cutting edge therapies
presently available.
Finally,
we need to attend to, analyze, and challenge the cultural context which
permeates this and all conversations about right and wrong in the development
and application of new biotechiology. It is a culture in which expediency is
the moral coin of the realm, and even conversations which purport to be about
matters of principle given way to projections of just how useful it will be if
we decide that no countervailing duty offers a barrier to our projects. It is a
context in which the body alive or dead is relentlessly commodified, valued as
advertising poster and tissue source and container of genetic information, over
and above the ancient objectification of body-as-laborer. It is a world where
globalization frequently means nothing so much as establishing currency
exchange rates for transactions in which human time, energy and hope is
bartered to the highest bidder, where increasing alienation from our bodily
existence is the price we pay for the exaltation of the will and the evasion of
every bodily limitation.
Above everything else, communities of faith must address
these questions as confessional communities, those who are not just
characterized but constituted by fundamental theological convictions about the
source and aims and end of human existence.
The
church can and must speak not as ersatz public policy engineers but as a
genuine theological community, out of and not incidental to its own identity.
Theologically, it means recalling basic features of Christian anthropology:
creation, embodiment, contingency, suffering, and redemption, and the
dispositions of patience and trust that conform to them. It requires thinking
about what it means to be alive in a body which is both powerful and
vulnerable, both mortal and destined to be raised "incorruptible" .
Questions about the ethics of embryonic stem cell research must be entertained
for what they are, part of larger questions about who we are and where our good
lies.
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