Ethicists fear erosion of moral center with advance of science
5 October 2000 (Newsroom) – Genetic testing of embryos to create a donor for an ailing sibling or to choose the sex of a baby ignores centuries of discourse about who counts as a person and ethicists believe further erodes traditional views of how human beings ought to treat each other.
Issues that go to the heart of what it means to be human are being decided even while moral standards are deteriorating and largely without comment from religious communities that from their beginnings have debated the thorniest questions that modern science now poses, these ethicists argue.
“The compass needle is bent, distorted, even off the compass,” warns C. Ben Mitchell, professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. “This is not the time to be making radical changes in the way we view human beings, to use human beings. Our moral sensibilities are too dull. We’re facing a future when we’re talking about computers having emotion and being able to think, and granting computers personhood, but not embryos.”
According to U.S. news reports this week, a Colorado woman’s doctors used genetic screening to eliminate embryos carrying the genetic disorder Fanconi anemia and to choose one that would have the type of cells needed to save the woman’s 6-year-old daughter, who suffers from the life-threatening, bone marrow deficiency. Children with Fanconi anemia suffer usually die by age 8 or 9.
Stem cells from the test-tube baby’s umbilical cord were collected when he was born in August and transplanted into his sister’s failing bone marrow last month at Fairview-University Medical Center in Minneapolis. Doctors there believe the sister has an 85 to 90 percent chance of recovery.
In Scotland, a couple whose only daughter died in a bonfire accident at age 3, wants to use the same type of genetic testing and in-vitro fertilization to produce a girl. The couple has four sons.
Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has rejected their request because of policy prohibiting the choosing of a baby’s sex unless there is a pressing medical reason. The couple has vowed to challenge the policy under the European Convention on Human Rights, which has been incorporated into U.K. law. They argue, in part, that the authority’s denial breaches the convention article that enshrines the individual’s right to “respect for his private and family life.”
Mitchell said the Colorado case is reminiscent of another more than 20 years ago in which a Chicago family had more children hoping for tissue matches that would save a terminally ill older child. “It raises the question why we have children,” he says. “I think that’s a national discussion we ought to have.” Having children to medically benefit other children is “an illegitimate reason,” he contends. “… That’s not what people ought to do.”
Traditionally children have not been used as research subjects unless the therapy benefits them, he says. “We would treat persons as ends to themselves, not as a means. We are treating embryos as means to our ends, not treating them with the dignity they warrant. (Nationally) we might decide to store cord blood, but to bring a child into the world for that purpose is bringing it in as a means to an end.”
In April U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas, told a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee considering federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, it is important to work to cure disease and alleviate suffering. But he asked: “When did it become acceptable to use an evil means to pursue a good end, even a great one? Doesn’t the so-called good end actually become bad by using bad means? If we manage the cure of some diseases and the betterment of some aspects of bodily health by means that involve the killing of the most defenseless and innocent of human beings, we will rightfully be judged harshly by history as having sought some benefits at the expense of our humanity and moral being.”
The speed with which scientific improvements are occurring is “faster than the religious deliberations,” contends Abdulaziz Sachedina, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “Religion and ethics are not important in this society. … Science is very arrogant, telling people of different (faith) traditions they know better, but they don’t. … They don’t take us seriously. I’m really worried about the indifference we show, especially if we’re talking about national policy.”
The problem is not that technology is advancing faster than people can cope with, says a San Francisco rabbi. Rather it is “that society is topsy-turvy and there is too much preoccupation with rights and too little with responsibility,” says Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, founder and dean of the Institute of Jewish Medical Ethics at Hebrew Academy.
“We feel that the Torah, the Jewish Constitution as we refer to it, has the basis to deal with every potential issue that society and technology can come up with,” the rabbi insists. “We have concepts and fundamental beliefs in the Torah which apply to everything. … There is a tremendous issue with ethics because there is this delinquency (in society). We have the experience of 3,500 years.”
Religious traditions have much to offer in developing the ethical framework within which difficult decisions can be made, and ought to be included in discussions establishing national policy guidelines, Sachedina maintains. “What are we going to do to improve the quality of life? That is very important in the Islamic tradition,” he notes. “… What kind of life is worth living? Why don’t we open the debate first, so that when we come to these decisions we are ready?”
Jewish law would not allow the destruction of embryos simply to choose a baby’s gender, Lipner says, but might permit it to save a life. “Destroying an embryo is destroying the beginning of life, and we are not allowed to do it. We have to protect the potential of life, and before we destroy even the potential of life we would have to have a good reason,” he explains. “… Judaism comes from a totally different angle (than society). We don’t come from the angle of rights but of responsibility. If anybody has a right, the potential human being has a right to exist. Whether an embryo is a complete human being, or half, or potential, the fact is that we will destroy the potential. Even if it is limited life we cannot do such a thing. We live in a society where there is too much talk about rights and that is why we have chaos, children’s rights, animal rights. You don’t have a right to destroy life because you have a frivolous need.”
Mitchell worries that there is little public education about genetic testing and other medical research, and that there could be a “tragedy” that would produce such a tremendous public backlash that it could destroy what is good about the current research. “We have a pretty anemic morality as a culture with which to assess these issues, much less make decisions about them,” he warns. “Where we have the least moral framework is who counts as a human person … and how we should treat them.”
“Everybody” should be engaged in national discussions about what is moral and ethical in medical research, he says.
That includes people of faith, not just secular ethics boards, Sachedina maintains. The Muslim scholar says he has been told by secular ethicists that they are reluctant to converse with people of varied religious backgrounds because they fear nasty disagreements. That view ignores what those faiths have in common, Sachedina maintains.
“Each tradition has its exclusivist view,” he acknowledges, “but they also have a way of building bridges and reaching out to others. We all say that life is sacred. No religious tradition says we must be killing people. There will be disputes in matters of detail. We have to live with differences. We have a consensus of values – sanctity of life, sanctity of personhood, sanctity of embryos.”
