This is Part II of a three part post (Part I is here) using Professor George’s “Embryo Ethics,” an essay forthcoming in Daedulas, to explore whether embryos share equal moral worth with other human organisms (beings).
George frames the issue:“At the heart of the debate over embryo-destructive research, then, are two fundamentals questions: what – or who – is a human embryo, and what is owed to a human embryo as a matter of justice.”
This post will address the first part of the question:scientifically, what – or who – is a human embryo.The third post will address the philosophical question.
George writes:
“The adult human being that is now you or me is the same human being who, at an earlier stage of his or her life, was an adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus, and an embryo.Even in the embryonic stage, you and I were undeniably whole, living members of the species Homo sapiens.We were then, as we are now, distinct and complete—though in the beginning we were, of course, developmentally immature—human organisms; we were not mere parts of other organisms.
“A human embryo is not something different in kind from a human being, like a rock, or a potato, or a rhinoceros.A human embryo is a human individual in the earliest stage of his or her natural development.Unless severely damaged or denied or deprived of a suitable environment, an embryonic human being will, by directing his or her own integral organic functioning, develop himself or herself to each more mature developmental stage along the gapless continuum of a human life.The embryonic, fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages are just that—stages in the development of a determinate and enduring entity—a human being—who comes into existence as a single cell organism (zygote) and develops, if all goes well, into adulthood many years later.
“By contrast, the gametes whose union brings into existence the embryo are not whole or distinct organisms.They are functionally (and genetically) identifiable as parts of the male or female (potential) parents.Each has only half the genetic material needed to guide the development of an immature human being toward full maturity.They are destined either to combine with an oocyte or spermatozoon to generate a new and distinct organism, or simply die.Even when fertilization occurs, they do not survive; rather, their genetic material enters into the composition of a new organism.
“But none of this is true of the human embryo, from the zygote and blastula stages onward.The combining of the chromosomes of the spermatozoon and of the oocyte generates what human embryology identifies as a new, distinct, and enduring organism.Whether produced by fertilization or by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) or some other cloning technique, the human embryo possesses all of the genetic material needed to inform and organize its growth.The direction of its growth is not extrinsically determined, but is in accord with the genetic information within it.Nor does it merely possess organizational information for maturation; rather, it has an active disposition to develop itself using that information.The human embryo is, then, a whole and distinct human organism—an embryonic human being.
“If the embryo were not a complete organism, then what could it be?Unlike the spermatozoa and the oocytes, it is not merely a part of a larger organism, namely, the mother or the father.Nor is it a disordered growth or gamete tumor such as a complete hydatidiform mole or teratoma.
“Perhaps someone will say that the early embryo is an intermediate form, something which regularly emerges into a whole human organism but is not one yet.But what could cause the emergence of the whole human organism, and cause it with regularity?As I have already observed, it is clear that from the zygote stage forward the major development of this organism is controlled and directed from within, that is, by the organism itself.So, after the embryo comes into being, no event or series of events occur which could be construed as the production of a new organism; that is, nothing extrinsic to the developing organism itself acts on it to produce a new character or new direction in development.”
In a footnote, George says that “The testimony of leading embryology textbooks is that a human embryo is—already and not merely potentially—a new individual member of the species Homo sapiens.His or her potential, assuming a sufficient measure of good health and a suitable environment, is to develop by an internally directed process of growth through the further stages of maturity on the continuum that is his or her life.”
He also addresses the question of twinning.“Some have claimed that the phenomenon of monozygotic twinning shows that the embryo in the first several days of its gestation is not a human individual.The suggestion is that as long as twinning can occur what exists is not yet a unitary human being, but only a mass of cells—each cell being totipotent and allegedly independent of the others.
“It is true that if a cell or group of cells is detached from the whole at an early stage of embryonic development then what is detached can sometimes become a distinct organism and has the potential to develop to maturity as distinct from the embryo from which it was detached (this is the meaning of “totipotent”).But this does nothing to show that before detachment the cells within the human embryo constituted only an incidental mass.
“Consider the parallel case (discussed by Aristotle) of division of a flatworm.Parts of a flatworm have the potential to become a whole flatworm when isolated from the present whole of which they are part.Yet no one would suggest that prior to the division of a flatworm to produce two whole flatworms the original flatworm was not a unitary individual.Likewise, at the early stages of human embryonic development, before specialization by the cells has progressed very far, the cells or groups of cells can become whole organisms if they are divided and have an appropriate environment after the division.But that fact does not in the least indicate that prior to the twinning event the embryo is other than a unitary, self-integrating, actively developing human organism.It certainly does not show that the embryo is a mere ‘clump of cells.’”
Stay tuned, next installment will address the philosophical question.
Thank you Steve for your continuing and searching inquiry into the moral worth of embryos and fetuses.Steve wonders whether the question can be settled without resort to authority.Professor Robert George answers “yes” and “no” in a forthcoming article, “Embryo Ethics,” which will be published in Daedulas.Yes, the issue can be resolved without resort to theological authority.But, no, it can’t be resolved without resort to some authority, and he rests his case on the authorities of science and philosophy. His response also answers the arguments for affording embryos diminished worth brought forth (but not shared by) Eduardo.I’ll lay out his argument in three posts, the first arguing that we need not rely on theological argument or theological authority to resolve the issue, the second exploring the scientific authority, and the third making the philosophical inquiry.
George frames the issue:“At the heart of the debate over embryo-destructive research, then, are two fundamentals questions: what – or who – is a human embryo, and what is owed to a human embryo as a matter of justice.”
He begins his essay by demonstrating the irrelevance of theological arguments.He says:“My view is that we should resolve our national debate over embryo-destructive research on the basis ofthe best scientific evidence as to when the life of a new human being begins and the most careful philosophical reasoning as to what is owed to nascent human life.Faith can, I believe, motivate us to stand up and speak out in defense of human life and dignity.And religious people should never hesitate to do that.But we need not rely on religious faith to tell us whether a human embryo is a new human life or whether all human beings – irrespective of not only of race, ethnicity and sex, but also irrespective of age, size, stage of development or condition of dependency – possess full moral worth and dignity. The application of fundamental philosophical principles in light of facts established by modern embryological science is more than sufficient for that task.”
In a footnote, he adds:“For what it is worth, I should point out that the Catholic Church does not try to draw scientific inferences about the humanity or distinctness of the human embryo from theological propositions about ensoulment. In fact, it works the other way around. Someone who wanted to talk the Pope into declaring that the human embryo is "ensouled”—which is something that up to this point the Catholic Church has never declared—would have to prove his point by marshaling (among other things) the scientific facts. The theological conclusion would be drawn on the basis of (among other things) the findings of science about the self-integration, distinctness, unity, determinateness, etc. of the developing embryo. So things work exactly the opposite of the way some advocates of embryo-destructive research who think they know what the Catholic Church says about "ensoulment" imagine they work.”
I have received an e-mail from a MOJ reader (a Catholic priest) who prefers to be anonymous that helpfully contributes to the discussion we are having:
In response to your most recent post in reply to Robert George, I
think you mistake his point about what it is to be a "rational animal
organism." Here he speaks in terms of Aristotelian categories, I
think, wherein to be a member of the species is to share in its
essence, regardless of the accidents of one's participation (in the
embryo's case, the accident of being at an early stage of formation).
The importance of this is that it moves the rights discourse to the
level of the categorical, and away from the "sufficient set of
properties" conversation required to justify (inter alia) stem cell
research.
Historically, looking for sufficient properties (beyond the
property "human") in order to deem a human "rights worthy" has taken us
down some pretty dark paths--excluding genders, races, economic
classes. It is not at all clear when it has taken us down a bright
path, except as defined by the dominant party doing the classifying.
Note that the category "having a brain" doesn't get one to
rationality, either. There are various states of brain impairment--the
severely and profoundly mentally retarded come to mind--that would be
hard pressed to qualify for rights under any sort of regime that I can
think of that would exclude embryos.
The kind of categorical thinking required by the
Aristotelian/Thomistic categories has the neat feature of rejecting the
historically failed attempts to get at the subset of human beings
genuinely meriting rights, and of giving full-throated support to the
rights of human beings simpliciter. This strikes me as the most humane
and defensible account of human rights one might imagine, and the most
demanding on society. Thus, the severely and profoundly retarded, who
cannot defend themselves, also need not be defended by adding up "plus
factors" as to their rational development or the like. Rather, they
are to be defended as having the profound dignity of the human being,
full stop.
Sounds even progressive to me, and the implications applying the
same thinking to the embryo would have for social policies (if taken
seriously by all of us) in terms of our duties to the unborn would
hardly be the stuff of conservative politics as traditionally
understood.
Columnist David Kuo's book Tempting Faith,
published today, will rival, on a smaller scale, Bob Woodward's State of
Denial as a disturber of the peace. "Smaller scale" does not mean
"small scale," since its accusations and revelations refer to the way the cohort
of evangelical supporters and promoters who have determined recent elections
have been taken and used by politicians. Many claims of the book became
public over the weekend, but here's a review.
David Kuo is as well
positioned as anyone to give behind-the-scenes views of how the "elites" in the
administration in Washington regard their most faithful and core supporters:
"goofy" and "nuts" are among the in-house words applied, says Kuo. He was
second-in-command of the ill-fated and "used" "faith-based initiatives,"
proposals that one had thought might have some merit. Like his
first-in-command predecessor, Kuo has given up on the post, the venture, and the
people with whom he was supposed to work. It is too soon to see if some of
what he says is distorted or biased because of his hurt, and most of us do not
know him well enough to know fully what his agenda is. Like Woodward,
however, he names names -- and may be even more explicit about sources than was
Woodward. And his is also not a pretty story. The key word is this:
"used." The evangelicals were "used" from the beginning, and
consistently.
What to think about it all? We will hear soon from
the Schadenfreude folk who will be understandably ready to gloat over Christian
Right misfortunes. But one might prefer to see this exposé as a lesson
that can be part of the maturing on the Christian Right flank. First, such
religious politicos may find that they wasted some of their fire on "secular
humanists" and "religious liberals," who were finally learning to take them
seriously and often to respect some of them. Evangelicals should have been
more mistrustful of "conservative" partners who cynically used them.
More
important in this process of welcoming evangelicals to the "Being Used Club" is
the chance that they will learn the limits of what "Christian" efforts can
achieve in the rough and tumble of politics. Looking back: President
Reagan cultivated them in 1980, and they got almost nothing in return. He
never went to Capitol Hill to promote legal measures to which he had given
rhetorical support (anti-abortion and pro-school prayer, for example). But
Reagan's support has not been exposed as being this exploitative. Now
"Welcome to the club!" might be the word from liberal Protestants, Catholics,
African American church leaders, and others who, a half-century ago, gave
political support but got little yield. You do not have to be a cynic to
note that even well-mannered and forthright political forces pick up and drop
constituencies and philosophies to advance their goals.
If the Kuo stories stand up to scrutiny and others with
experiences like his come forward, the current spiritual muscle-flexers might
well turn cynical in frustration. One hopes they will simply become more
realistic and less self-assured about what their witness means and what their
weight can legitimately achieve. Quid pro quo has not worked for their
religious-political predecessors either.
For further reading:
Keith Olbermann writes about David Kuo's book
Tempting Faith in his article "Book says Bush just using Christians," which
can be found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15228489/.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
I would like to offer a brief response to Robert George. As I see it, the
question is whether the capacity to feel and think has moral significance or
whether a human organism such as an embryo with no capacity to feel or think
has the same moral status as a baby or adult. An embryo can be characterized as a human
being or, alternatively, as a human organism that could develop into a human being.
Professor George says in Eduardo’s example that we should imagine that the
babies could not feel or that the babies had no relationship to human beings,
but that is a part of what those on the other side would argue makes them
human. The embryo has not developed to that point.
Professor George says, “[W]e humans
possess fundamental worth and dignity by virtue of the kind of substance we are---namely, a rational animal
organism---and not in virtue of
accidental qualities, such as the stage of development we happen to have reached.”
Embryos, of course, are not yet rational. They have no brains. The assertion
that they possess dignity regardless of their stage of development is precisely
the point in question. It can not be demonstrated by assertion. Perhaps, demonstration,
one way or another (without resort to authority) is not possible.
By the way, I do not think concerns
about the morality of abortion necessarily rest on an assumption that the fetus
is of the same moral status as a baby or an adult. One could argue as the U.S. Bishops do
(of course, they agree with Professor George as well) that having an abortion
interferes with God’s creative plan. This argument need not depend on the
notion that embryos or fetuses have rights (Ronald Dworkin develops this view
in Life’s Dominion) or are human beings from the time of conception. On that
line of argument, abortion offends against God, not against fetuses or embryos.
It could account for why many pro life Catholics might think that abortion is
one important issue among many other important issues rather than an overriding
issue.
Earlier in our conversation on conscience and authority, Fr. Araujo quoted John Courtney Murray's observation that “[T]he Declaration [on Religious Freedom] nowhere lends its authority to the theory for which the phrase frequently stands, namely, that I have a right to do what my conscience tells me to do, simply because my conscience tells me to do it. This is a perilous theory. Its particular peril is subjectivism—the notion that, in the end, it is my conscience, and not the objective truth, which determines what is right or wrong, true or false.”
Boston College law prof and former MoJ-er Greg Kalscheur, S.J., offers the following supplement to this quotation:
Thanks to Bob Araujo for calling attention to the the discussion of conscience and freedom found in John Courtney Murray's commentary on the Declaration on Religious Freedom. MOJ readers might also be interested in Murray's post-conciliar thoughts regarding freedom in the Church. In a 1966 article entitled "Freedom, Authority, Community," Murray argued that "the classical conception of the vertical relationship of authority and freedom . . . needs to assume a more Christian and therefore more human form by standing forth in the living flesh and blood that is the Christian community. More abstractly, the vertical relationship of command-obedience needs to be complemented by the horizontal relationship of dialogue between authority and the free Christian community. The two relationships do not cancel, but reciprocally support, each other. This more adequate understanding of the ecclesial relationship does not indeed dissolve the inevitable tension between freedom and authority. But by situating this perennial polarity within the living context of community, it can serve to make the tension healthy and creative, releasing energies radiant from both poles for their one common task, which is to build the beloved community." Murray's article can be found at pp. 209-21 of "Bridging the Sacred and the Secular: Selected Writings of John Courtney Murray, S.J. (edited by J. Leon Hooper, S.J., Georgetown Univ. Press, 1994). It's a shame that Murray's death prevented him from articulating the "full theology of Christian freedom in its relation to the doctrinal and disciplinary authority of the Church" to which he alluded in fn. 58 of his commentary (previously cited by Bob).
The airport taxi stand may be the next venue in the conscience wars, though this battle appears one-sided. A Minneapolis airport official noted that the proposal to allow drivers to self-identify as not willing to transport passengers with alcohol triggered 500 comments from the public, not a single one of them supportive of the proposal. Apparently in other cities, Muslim taxi drivers have not only refused to transport passengers with alcohol, but also passengers with seeing-eye dogs. Daniel Pipes argues that accommodations in this area amount to the integration of Islamic law with state law.
I wonder: will the growing presence and visibility of Muslims make the public less amenable to religious accommodations across the board?
I don't have enough time this morning to respond to Robert George's -- as always -- thoughtful and interesting post, though I hope to get to it later. (My initial take is that even stripping away all the dissimilarities -- imagine that the infants are orphans under general anesthesia, etc. -- we would still favor the infants and that the differential treatment has something to do with the probability of developing into a mature human being, but I need to read and think about his post more carefully.)
I did want to post a link very kindly sent to me by Ryan Anderson (of First Things) in response to my question about removing one cell from an embryo in order to create stem cells for research. Ryan posted something on this on First Things a while back, and I thought our readers might find his reflections interesting and informative. Here's the link.
Robbie George has thoughtfully intervened by email to me in our debate over blastocysts vs. infants. I will let him respond to Eduardo's argument that he does not get what I don't get about this hypothetical: Robbie begins
"I'm deeply skeptical, as I see from your MoJ posting in reply to Eduardo Penalver you are, of the capacity of emotional reactions to disclose ethical truths, especially when it comes to difficult and contested ethical questions. (This is one point on which I sometimes find myself a little at odds with Leon Kass---a thinker for whom I have the greatest admiration.) But even assuming that our reaction to the hypothetical dilemma sketched by Professor Penalver could disclose something about the moral status of human beings in the embryonic stage, a profound problem is presented by the difficulty of imagining how we would feel---what our emotional reactions would be---in circumstances in which all the factors other than stage of development just as such incline our feelings towards rescuing the infants.
When we first hear the hypothetical case, we immediately think: "of course, I would rescue the infants." But at work here are lots of implicit assumptions---many having no necessary connection to the differences of developmental stage between embryos and infants. Unless we pause very deliberately to disentangle things, we will (for example) be working with the background assumption that the infants would suffer intense pain in the fire, and perhaps even experience terror. In addition, we will be assuming that the infants have parents and perhaps grandparents, siblings, and others who have already bonded with them and have begun forming relationships with them. These people will be devastated by the loss of these infants, and it will intensify their pain to know that the infants' death came by incineration. So, if we are to have any hope of learning anything about the moral status of embryos from the problem, we will have to stipulate that the infants had, as it happened, been given general anaesthesia just before the fire began and will therefore feel no pain and experience no terror. We will have to stipulate further that no one has bonded with the infants or formed any sort of relationship with them. Now, when we begin entering these stipulations (and we would have to enter still more, but I don't want to make this comment too tedious), we become less sure of just what (and how powerful) our feelings or "intuitions" would be in the circumstances of the fire. But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that even with all the stipulations entered, we would still find ourselves drawn to rescue the infants rather thant the embryos in tragic circumstances in which a choice between them must be made. Does that tell us that humans in the embryonic stage really are inferior in moral worth to infants (or, at least, what we really believe "deep down" that they are inferior)?
Let's step back to get a bead on the problem. We assume that "everyone would choose to rescue the infants." Yet no one can identify a reason (that can stand up to analytical scrutiny) for distinguishing in fundamental worth and dignity between human beings on the basis of age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency. That is because we humans possess fundamental worth and dignity by virtue of the kind of substance we are---namely, a rational animal organism---and not in virtue of accidental qualities, such as the stage of development we happen to have reached. So we rational animal organisms possess worth and dignity from the point at which we come into being, and we possess them for our entire lives. We come to possess them by coming into being as a human (or other rational animal, if such exist) individual, and we cannot cease to possess them except by ceasing to be (by dying).
So the question is whether the fact that "everyone would choose to rescue the infants" indicates that there is some deep reason---one that no one has been able to articulate (and which is perhaps not articulable)---for supposing that infants and those at later developmental stages possess greater worth and dignity than human beings in the embryonic and (perhaps) fetal stages. The point of the hypothetical dilemma is to find a way to defeat the analytical argument that at least seems to show rigorously that the nature of human dignity is such that it cannot depend on accidental qualities. (I'll attach to this message the ms. of an article I have forthcoming in Daedalus which presents a version of the argument in non-technical terms.)
Now, Professor Penalver is heading in the right direction by trying to eliminate all elements of differential attachment, so that we are left with a pure choice (in which emotion plays no role) between rescuing the embryos or the infants. The idea is that by eliminating emotion, we're left only with reason. The reason is, in other words, whatever it is that is left when we squeeze out all the elements of emotional motivation. So the inference that is invited is that, since we would (it is assumed) in the tragic circumstances choose to rescue the infants, there must be a reason. The trouble, I think, is that it is impossible to remove all the elements of emotional motivation. Building in all the stipulations necessary to make the hypothetical case work as a true test, there still remain powerful emotional factors. It is far easier to empathize with and emotionally relate to the infants because (though they are no more capable than the embryos of immediately exercising characteristically human mental functions) they manifest more fully than the embryos qualities we associate with ourselves. They have faces, for example, and hands. (As a matter of psychological fact, humans across cultures tend to regard their faces and hands as integral to their identities as individuals.) The infants are sentient, as any adult contemplating the hypothetical dilemma would have to be. (Of course, some living adults lack sentience, just as there are adults lacking faces and hands.) The infants have begun expressing, albeit in a very rudimentary way (so rudimentary as to justify the quotation marks I am about to set the term within), a "personality." Their humanity (though no more real than the embryos') is much more evident to appearances. Indeed, it is immediately evident, in a way that the humanity of the embryos is not. (That, in significant measure, is what produces the debate over the human and moral status of the embryo in the first place.)
What does all this mean? It means that reflection on the hypothetical dilemma does not enable us to identify a reason, strictly speaking, for favoring the infants over the embryos purely by virtue of their more advanced stage of development. (Remember, we have by entering a set of stipulations created a pure, but entirely artificial, case.) But that doesn't necessarily mean that it would be morally wrong to act on the entirely understandable and widely shared emotional motives we would have for doing so. It is not always wrong in accepting bad side effects---even where death is among the side effects---to resolve a dilemma on the basis of one's feelings. Where one is not acting contrary to the integral directiveness of reason(s), one may (even in tragic circumstances) act on subrational motives. For example, no one would criticize a mother who rescued her own two infants (or embryos) over two infants (or embryos) that are not her own. Indeed, few would criticize her for rescuing her own infant instead of a pair of twins or even triplets where she is rushing to escape a fire and has time to rescue either her own infant or the others, but cannot rescue hers and the others. And we could multiply examples to make the same point.
Professor Penalver, if I understand him correctly, is trying to use the hypothetical dilemma to show that somehow deep down we perceive a reason to think that infants are of greater worth and dignity than embryos based on their more advanced stage of development. For reasons that I hope I've made clear, I don't think it will accomplish that goal. He is right about one thing, though. Whatever it shows, reflection on the hypothetical dilemma does not license deliberate embryo-killing. Deliberate (or "direct") killing is not what is at issue when someone faces a choice of whom to rescue. A judgment in favor of saving X instead of Y, where both cannot be saved, does not entail that we would be justified in killing Y, even where killing Y could enable us to save X (by, for example, providing a transplantable vital organ needed to keep X alive). Plainly it would be wrong to harvest the heart and liver of a PVS patient to save the life of a fifteen year old girl---or even two girls---who, with organ transplants, could lead long healthy lives. Similarly, I hope that Penalver would agree that it is wrong to kill embryos (whether in the zygote, morula, or blastocyst stages or in later stages) to produce pluripotent stem cells in the hope of creating therapies to benefit more developmentally mature human beings.
But this brings me to a point on which I am confident that Professor Penalver is mistaken. He says: "I'm quite certain that if I said there were a disabled person in one room and a healthy person in the other, people would (correctly) say that they would find some random way to choose between the two rooms." Depending on the type and extent of disability, I'm quite certain that the opposite is the case. Imagine that in one room there is a normal, healthy fifteen year old girl. In the other, there is a twenty-three year old woman in a persistent vegetative state. My guess is that most people would not "find some random way to choose" whom to rescue. Most people would rescue the girl. And they would make the same choice, even if the option were rescuing two young women in PVS conditions. Now, I think we can make sense of this without supposing that the PVS patients are, by virtue of their debilitated condition, inferior to the girl in basic human worth and dignity. We would, again, need to begin the analyis by entering stipulations to purify the comparison for analytical purposes.
(A final parenthetical point. Professor Penalver has again raised the question why we do not consider early embryo loss to be a public health problem. But those of us who believe in the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of human life in all stages and conditions do consider it to be a serious public health problem, though it is impossible to do very much about it given the current state of knowledge. Still pro-life scientists and physicians take it seriously. They work to prevent early embryo loss and miscarriages when they can, both for the sake of embryonic life, and to assist couples whose desire to have children is frustrated by implantation failure or other problems leading to embryo death. And, needless to say, many defenders of embryonic human life oppose forms of "contraception" that prevent newly conceived embryos from implanting.)"
In a forthcoming article, "Embryo Ethics," in Daedalus, Professor Robert George writes that "Increasingly it appears likely that we will soon be able to obtain embryonic stem cells or their exact equivalent by means that do not require the destruction of embryos. For a survey of promising approaches, see the White Paper of the President's Council on Bioethics, 'Alternative Sources of Pluripotent Stem Cells' (2005), avialable online at www.bioethics.gov."
