Readers of the OUTLOOK are familiar with the heated public controversy over the use of human embryos to harvest stem cells for medical research. What are called embryos are actually ova fertilized in a Petri dish. The zygotes are forced to undergo cell division, frozen and stored on a shelf for possible use later, usually for fertility treatment– but never implanted in a human uterus. For that reason they are not really embryos, technically speaking. The point of interest is that they are currently the best source of “pluripotent stem cells,” meaning cells that have the capacity to become any type of cell in the body when properly treated. These cells are needed to develop effective treatments for diseases that already include Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, juvenile diabetes, muscular dystrophy, and paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury.
The sticking point for those who object, including President George W. Bush, is that they believe these fertilized eggs possess the value of human beings and the process of extracting stem cells from them kills human life. Many scientists, on the other hand, have a hard time imagining how a still undifferentiated zygote that will never be implanted in a uterus qualifies as a human being. An estimated 400,000 fertilized ova or embryos are stored in U.S. freezers today, and most of them will be discarded.
Stem cell research is rapidly advancing in many other countries, notably the United Kingdom and South Korea, and in private U.S. labs that do not receive federal funding. Ironically, one of the effects of the Bush administration’s ban on embryonic stem cell research funding is that the research is now barreling on outside the ethical guidelines established early in the game by the National Institutes of Health and approved by the Clinton administration. Those guidelines made it clear that only embryos could be used that were created for the purpose of fertility treatment and were in excess of clinical need. When stem cell research is removed from NIH oversight into the private sector, such ethical restrictions are not obligatory.
Ethical dilema?
Frankly, I find it hard to view the current controversy as an ethical dilemma. There are good reasons, though, to understand it. Briefly, the argument against the use of embryos to derive stem cells rests on three moral moves: (1) the move to locate the value of human life mainly in its biological or material part (as against what are usually called personal qualities); (2) the move to absolutize the value of biological human life; and (3) the move to invest the smallest biological quantum that bears human genes with that value. There is precedent for this kind of moral thinking in Roman Catholic theological positions of the last century, but the Bible does not support that view of human life, in my reading, and most of Christian history, including the Reformed tradition, has moved in other directions.
To be more specific about those directions, (1) the value of human life has been seen in covenantal, i.e. relational and social, ways that emphasize the creaturely capacity of human beings to respond willingly to the Creator and to each other. Bodies are in-spirited, the spiritual is embodied, but neither aspect alone holds the real thing. Human tissue or bodies are worthy of respect, but the intrinsic value of human life is not located in the material stuff, such as cells.
Being human means having abilities that allow us to worship, to think, to love, and to live with purpose. When these qualitative abilities are lacking, either because they have been irretrievably lost (as in the Schaivo case) or because they have never existed and will never develop (as in the embryonic stem cell situation), then it would be theologically incomprehensible if not absurd to impute the same moral value to them as we claim for persons.
(2) Biological human life has never been seen as an absolute value, not even “innocent” human life. The Church has always seen the willingness to lay down one’s life as a sign of love. Christian faith is grounded in the belief that God “gave his only Son” on the cross. Should we think of God as less moral than the President and several outspoken senators? I heard an old Scot say once, “It seems to me that the Good Lord doth many things in His official capacity that He would never do as a private citizen.” That divine double standard is better humor than it is moral theology. When any created thing is made absolute, it becomes idolatrous, and that includes physical life. The “sanctity” of human life is never taught in the Bible. Acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God are all the way through it. Justice and compassion are ways to respect and serve human life without making it sacrosanct.
(3) The move to invest fertilized ova or embryos with the value of full humanity is the result of a common mistake in framing the ethical question. When does human life begin? is the wrong question not only because it is unanswerable but because it misses the point. The point is, Where do we locate the value of human life? The question is not an empirical one but a spiritual, value question. If what I have said before is true, the worth of human life rests not in our cells but in our capacity to receive and return God’s love, and to do so by caring for each other and for the earth properly. In that God-breathed capacity lies the value of human life. It is present in the poor, in the sick, in the enemy, whom Jesus directs us to love and serve, but it does not appear to be present in the embryo.
No, I don’t think the embryonic stem cell controversy is a dilemma. When the political climate changes, it will probably go away. What it can do, though, is help the Church sharpen our moral tools for the really tough questions that are ready to break upon us.
Sharpening moral tools
What are those questions? I have said that When does human life begin? is not the question, and I re-framed it in terms of what we value about human life. Another way to re-frame that question– which also has to do with value— is, What does it mean to be human? Let me explain why I believe that is the great question.
With stampeding advances in the science of human genetics and technologies of genetic engineering, and with exponential increases in artificial intelligence and robotics, the issues that will demand our best theological discernment over the next several decades relate to radical changes in human experience. To be more clear, when “natural” human consciousness is altered or “enhanced” by genetic manipulation or by brain implants that either are or connect to thought-expanding computers, those changes strike at the essence of what we have always called personhood. Those changes affect free will, responsibility, accountability, and love. We must ask how much is affected? Are there boundaries to the human experience of mind (always very close to spirit) that ought to be protected from external invasion? Is there a human “essence” that should not be tampered with? How much can the nephesh that God makes from clay and spirit be altered by human manipulation and still be a person? How do we understand soul?
And to take the question to another level, will there be machines that can legitimately lay claim to personhood? Trekkies have already been asking if Data, the robot/android who mimics human reason and feeling in Star Trek: the Next Generation, has a soul. Several years ago my congregation pondered a sermon entitled, “When will the Church baptize a robot?” The question sounds like a preacher’s trick to grab attention, but it’s not. (At least not altogether!) The title directs us to probe more deeply than our customary reflexive anthropocentrism–the box that we are just beginning to realize is just that, a mental box–in asking what traits qualify one to be a child of God. Is bios essential? Homo sapiens? That is a question that will challenge our theological discernment profoundly in an age of increasing fluidity between the biological and the machine. I think that’s where the real dilemmas await us!
ALBERT H. KELLER is Associate Professor of Ethics, Medical University of South Carolina and pastor of Circular Church, Charleston, S. C.
