I wrote about some of the connections between the feminist critique of autonomy-based theories of justice (a la Glendon), its connection with Alisdaire MacIntyre's work in Dependent Rational Animals, and how Catholic thought enriches that critique, in the 2006 St. John's symposium on the Jurisprudential Legacy of JPII.
But all this focus on man's dependence on man shouldn't obscure something else that seems missing from the Rush-like world view -- our dependence on God. That's a dependency much more radical than even the dependencies of childhood, old age, and disability than is typically the focus of "dependency justice" talk. Maybe I'm straining too hard to make a connection here, but I just wanted to share something from an amazing book I'm currently reading about an amazing woman by another amazing woman. It's (yes, you're reading this correctly) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Mary of Nazareth, by Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda (and, yes, she is related, by marriage, to our very own Michael S.).
M. R. Scaperlanda points out that the words "Let it be" are spoken at three crucial points of the Scripture: by God, during the creation of the world; by Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane; and by Mary, at the Annunciation. Mary's "Let it be" became her life-long prayer. I don't honestly know how this furthers the current discussion, but I keep returning to the following passage from the book on the significance of this prayer, which seems to me to be saying something radical about the "dependence" to which we're all called. (And yes, the Beatles song keeps running through my head as I think through this.)
Mary knew that each human being is accountable, that what we do, how we live, and the choices we make are never without consequence. So by choosing to say to God, "Let my life be your will, and not mine," meant she was willing to live through that end result -- not even knowing what that meant!
When Mary responded to the angel with the words, let it be done to me as you say, she was able to do so because her life's foundation included two important factors.
Mary believed in God, in a good and merciful God. Her image of the creator of the universe was of a mightly and holy being, whose mercy to his people lives on from age to age. And, because this was her understanding of God, Mary was willing to put her entire life in his care -- and her son's life as well!
Mary trusted her God so completely, so deeply, in fact, that she called herself the servant of the Lord. This understanding of "servant," then, is not actually about submissiveness. It is instead about trusting in God's goodness. But it does include Mary's willingness to place the direction of her life in God's hands -- all of it. No matter what "surprise" came her way.
Becoming a mother while still a virgin. Giving birth to the Son of God. Wise men from the east coming to pay her son homage. Listening to her husband's dreams -- even when it meant leaving her home and family and living as refugees.
In every new situation placed before her, Mary was able -- and open -- to see that reality, whatever it was, as parat of God's will for her life and the lives of those whom she loved.
She didn't have to, you know. She chose to say yes over and over. But just because her yes was a prayer did not prevent her from being accountable for the consequences of that yes, in every situation -- even standing at the foot of a cross watching her son die.
Mary was willing to turn her will and her life over to the care of God, and she did so deliberately and consistently, because in the midst of a crazy world, she trusted in the goodness of her Creator.
In First Things, Ryan Anderson and Maureen Condic have written this response to Princeton biologist Lee Silver's arguments that there is no difference between human embryos and human skin cells, discussed here, here, and here.
Just before Thanksgiving, news broke about a new stem-cell technique that could produce the equivalent of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) but without using or destroying human embryos. We referred to the news that these cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), could be made from human skin cells as a “Stem-Cell Breakthrough” marking “The End of the Stem-Cell Wars.” It certainly gave us one more thing for which to be thankful when we sat down to dinner that Thursday night.
In the new issue of First Things, one of us (Condic) argues that scientists are now “Getting Stem Cells Right” (subscription required). The article closes with this:
Many Americans consider research on human embryos to be fundamentally wrong. Even some who do not share this conviction are nonetheless uneasy with using human embryos as research material. James Thomson recently remarked in an interview with the New York Times, “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” Good research, research that truly advances our knowledge, enhances our lives, and ennobles our culture, must respect both scientific and ethical standards. IPSC research meets the highest standards of science, and it respects the ethical standards of many Americans who object to human embryonic stem cell research as deeply immoral.
But some scientists can’t fathom the idea of limits being placed upon them, and their visceral reaction has produced some commentary that is just downright bizarre. Lee Silver, a professor of biology at Princeton, suggests that the pro-lifers are fools—and that scientists are duping them. On the one hand, he argues that there should be no ethical concerns at all, for embryos and skin cells are more or less the same. On the other hand, Silver thinks that this new technique should not relieve any pro-lifer’s worries, since the stem cells it produces can (he claims) develop into babies. Scientists know this, Silver says, but they are hiding it from the public in a massive propaganda campaign.
Our local paper recently printed a story about this development in health care. I wonder how much these professionals charge?
A growing number of researchers think that forgiveness -- a virtue embraced by almost every religious tradition as a balm for the soul -- might be medicine for the body, as well. In less than a decade, those preaching and studying forgiveness have amassed an impressive slate of findings on its possible health benefits.
They have shown that "forgiveness interventions" -- often just a couple of short sessions in which the wounded are guided toward positive feelings for an offender -- can improve cardiovascular function, diminish chronic pain, relieve depression and boost quality of life among the very ill.
. . . ."It's a skill that can be taught," said psychologist Fred Luskin, director of Stanford University's Forgiveness Projects and a leading researcher in the field who teaches groups, many of them bound together in the workplace, to forgive offenses large and small.
Abstract: This essay evaluates the moral logic of "liberal eugenics": the ideal of genetic control which leaves decisions about what sort of people to produce in the hands of individual parents, absent government intervention. I argue that liberal eugenics cannot be justified on the basis of the underlying liberal theory which inspires it. I introduce an alternative to Rawls's social primary goods that might be called natural primary goods: hereditable mental and physical capacities and dispositions that are valued across a range of projects and pursuits. I suggest that reproductive genetic biotechnologies like embryo selection, cellular surgery, and genetic engineering, which aim to enhance `general purpose' traits in offspring are less like childrearing practices a liberal government leaves to the discretion of parents than like practices the state makes compulsory. I argue that if the liberal commitment to autonomy is important enough for the state to mandate childrearing practices such as health care and basic education, that very same interest is important enough for the state to mandate safe, effective, and functionally integrated genetic practices that act on analogous all-purpose traits such as resistance to disease and general cognitive functioning. I conclude that the liberal case for compulsory eugenics is a reductio against liberal theory.
Abstract: This Article considers the moral and legal status of practices that aim to modify traits in human offspring. As advancements in reproductive biotechnology give parents greater power to shape the genetic constitution of their children, an emerging school of legal scholars has ushered in a privatized paradigm of genetic control. Commentators defend a constitutionally protected right to prenatal engineering by appeal to the significance of procreative liberty and the promise of producing future generations who are more likely to have their lives go well. This 'new eugenics,' however, confronts us with ethical challenges that neither liberal arguments about autonomy, fairness, and consent, nor utilitarian arguments about preferences, happiness, and equality, are able to capture.
I begin by analyzing the Supreme Court's modern substantive due process jurisprudence, as it bears on recent advancements and controversies in genetic science. After developing a doctrinal framework that could support an asserted right to genetic engineering, I draw on empirical research in behavioral psychology to examine the influence of eugenic norms on egalitarian attitudes and institutions. I predict that if parents become accustomed to choosing the genes of their children, it would be radically more difficult to give an influential account for why the successful should adopt a charitable posture toward those who are less fortunate. I argue that by shifting control over offspring DNA from chance to choice, enhancement will inflate a sense of individual entitlement for social and economic outcomes.
I conclude that increasing willingness to prevent the birth of abnormal children distracts attention from institutions that fail to accommodate the limitations of imperfect people. Some may reply that producing people who better fit the roles society chooses to reward need not deter us from providing for people whose abilities fail to meet the demands of modern society. However, this reply misses the way that changes in reproductive practices can bring about changes in the way that we understand our identities and relationships. Eugenic solutions to social problems such as poverty, crime, and unemployment reshape the challenge of genetic disadvantage so that it is no longer one we address through collective measures such as public education, social services, and income redistribution, and instead becomes one for individual parents to prevent through donor screening, embryo discard, or selective abortion.
Think how much more frustrating that must be if you're the Pope. I found this rather poignant.
I wonder if that Animal Law section that was being proposed at the AALS managed to get itself organized. If so, maybe some day Benedict could present the CLT perspective at one of its panels?
John Allen has an interesting op ed piece in today's NYT, about the Pope's upcoming visit to the U.N. Some excerpts:
Moreover, Benedict undeniably has a point about relativism. From China to Iran to Zimbabwe, it’s common for authoritarian regimes to argue that rights like freedom of the press, religion and dissent represent Western — or even Anglo-American — traditions. If human rights are to be protected in a 21st century increasingly shaped by non-Western actors like China and the so-called Shiite axis from Lebanon to Central Asia, then a belief in objective truth grounded in universal human nature is critical. That’s hardly just a Catholic concern, but no one on the global scene is making the argument with the clarity of Benedict XVI.
Part of the problem is that so far, this cerebral pope has a track record of blurring such compelling arguments during his biggest turns on stage. When he visited Auschwitz in May 2006, for example, he offended some Jews by asserting that the Nazis tried to destroy Christianity too. Four months later, he set off a firestorm among Muslims with a lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor to the effect that Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman,” such as “his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” And in Brazil last May, the pope incensed indigenous people in Latin America by suggesting that Christianity was not imposed on them.
In each case, Benedict was actually trying to make a deeper point worth hearing. In Auschwitz, his contention was that objective truth grounded in God is the only bulwark against the blind will to power; his Regensburg address was devoted to reason and faith, arguing that reason shorn of faith becomes nihilism, while faith without reason ends in fanaticism and violence; and in Brazil, he argued that since Christ embraces all humanity, he cannot be foreign to anyone’s spiritual experience.
Those ideas, however, were overshadowed by a few throwaway phrases that betray a worrying insensitivity to how unfamiliar audiences are likely to hear what he says.
Robby George offers this response to Silver, explaining that "It is excerpted from a reply on NRO to one of the items Professor Silver posted to which you linked."
Patrick Lee and Robert P. George respond: Lee Silver continues to bluster and spin in an effort to depict people who disagree with him as “fundamentalists” who rely on religious faith, rather than science, for their beliefs about matters of biological fact. It is Professor Silver himself, however, who refuses to face up to the scientific facts about human embryos.
The point at issue is whether human embryos are or are not human beings in the embryonic stage of their natural development. We say they are; Silver claims they are not. Here is another way of putting the question: Does the term “human embryo” refer to something distinct from a human being (in the way that terms like “alligator,” “cotton,” and “stone” — or even terms like “human liver” or “human fingernail” — refer to things distinct from human beings), or does it refer to a human being at a certain stage of development (in the way that terms like “infant,” “adolescent,” and “adult” refer to stages of development)?
Plainly, the complete human organism that is now you, the reader, was once an adolescent and before that an infant. Were you once an embryo? If Silver’s view is correct, the answer is “no.” But the truth is that the answer is “yes” — you were once an embryo, just as you were once an adolescent, a child, an infant, and a fetus. The human organism that is now you is the very same organism that began in the embryonic stage and developed by a gradual and gapless process of self-directed growth to the mature stage of a human being. By contrast, you were never a sperm cell or an ovum. The sperm cell and ovum whose union brought you into existence were genetically and functionally parts of other, larger organisms — your parents. But the organism — the new and distinct human individual — who was brought into existence by their union is the organism that is now reading these words.
It is the science of human embryology — not the Bible or any other religious text or authority — that tells us that human embryos are indeed what we say they are and what Silver denies that they are, namely, whole, living individuals of the species Homo sapiens. As complete human organisms, and not mere parts of larger organisms, embryos are radically unlike human gametes, somatic cells, organs, tissues, and the like. If provided with adequate nutrition and a suitable environment, and barring accident or disease, a human embryo will, by internally directing its own integral organic functioning, develop himself or herself from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages, and into adulthood with his or her distinctness, unity, and identity fully intact. What happens in successful fertilization or cloning is the production of a new and distinct organism — a complete individual member of the species in the initial (embryonic) stage of its life. None of Lee Silver’s bluster and spin can make that decisive fact disappear.
Ignoring Arguments The basis of Silver’s denial that human embryos are human beings is his remarkable claim that human embryos are equivalent to human embryonic stem cells. He argues that, since nobody believes that stem cells are human beings, no one should believe that embryos are human beings. But Silver’s premise is not only remarkable, it is indefensible. In a previous posting, we identified the errors in Silver’s attempt to defend it by reference to the possibility of tetraploid complementation. Silver has not made any effort to resuscitate his argument or respond to our refutation. We also observed that if Silver’s remarkable claim were true, other scientists — particularly human embryologists and stem cell scientists with greater expertise than Professor Silver — would confirm it. Why have they not? Silver’s answer is as remarkable as his claim itself. He asserts that scientists know the truth, but they are deliberately hiding it from the public for fear that if it were revealed people would demand new restrictions on stem-cell research. There is no polite way to say this: Professor Silver’s suggestion that there is a massive scientific deception or cover up is ridiculous.
Professor Lee Silver brought to my attention this post containing his response to Robby George's response to Silver's argument about ipc cells being morally indistinguishable from embyronic stem cells.
Carter Snead had this to say in response to biologist Lee Silver's argument that ipc cells are potential embryos:
Silver has made this argument in the past, and it has been decisively rebutted by Robby George and Pat Lee ( http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTNiYWM2ZjJiYWVlN2IyMzFjOWYwMDZmMTc4MzU2MGU =). In short, Silver is arguing that ES cells can become human beings because a process called "tetraploid complementation" (in which ES cells are fused with a mouse embryos that has 4 sets of chromosomes rather than the usual two) produces a new chimeric organism. But as George and Lee show below, tetraploid complementation is simply a kind of conception (or inception) in which ES cells play a role. Silver's argument is exactly analogous to the claim that a human skin cell can become an organism because when its nucleus is placed in an ennucleated egg, this process (cloning or SCNT) gives rise to a new organism, genetically virtually identical to the skin cell donor. Therefore, this argument would conclude, a skin cell is the same as an embryo. This is obviously fallacious, and ignores the key difference between organ and organism, parts and wholes.
Rick's recent post described Prof. Russell Korobkin's arguments in the wake of the announcement of the discovery of an alternative to embyonic stem cells -- the ability to induce a pluripotent state in skin cells ("induced pluripotent state", or "ipc"). Korobkin repeats the basic argument for continuing with embryonic research despite this development -- that there's nothing ethically problematic about the use of embryonic stem cells for research.
There's an interview with biologist Lee Silver on the NYT site that demonstrates a twist on this basic argument. He argues that the ipc cells aren't morally distinguishable from embryonic stem cells because they, too, could develop into embryos. Is that true? (Carter?) I haven't gotten that impression from anything I've read. His claim is that this whole discovery is a cynical semantic game that's going to allow scientists to essentially continue embryonic stem cell research because the vocabulary is being manipulated. (But I gather that doesn't trouble him, because he shares Korobkin's view about the ethics of embryonic cell research.)
The interview is worth watching, for a sobering sense of the way some scientists argue about this issue. Listen carefully around 4 minutes, 30 seconds into the interview for the most chilling description of the human soul you're likely to hear!
