January 12, 2008 10:57 AM
Rock-Solid Logic
WESLEY J. SMITH
This book is bigger than the sum of its parts. The pro-life apologist and Princeton professor Robert P. George and his co-author, University of South Carolina philosopher Christopher Tollefsen, don’t just make a compelling and rational case — no religious arguments here — for the biological humanity and personhood of embryos. They also demonstrate convincingly that human life matters morally at every stage of existence, simply because it is human. And despite the high academic credentials of both authors, Embryo is no scholarly tome. Instead, while George and Tollefsen write very intelligently and mount their case with impeccable logical precision, the book is highly readable and their argument readily accessible to the average reader.
Their topic could not be more important. Across a broad spectrum of philosophies and ideologies, the unique moral importance of human life is under dedicated siege. Animal-rights advocates, for example, reject human exceptionalism, claiming that according human life unique value is “speciesism,” a perceived wrong asserted to be as odious as racism. What really matters, they insist, is the ability to feel pain. Hence, since both cows and human beings experience that sensation, bovines are our moral equals and cattle ranching is akin to slavery.
The concept of speciesism is also accepted in the field of utilitarian bioethics, which might be described as essentially an anti-humanism movement. According to the likes of Peter Singer and the British bioethicist John Harris, being human does not convey value. Rather, what matters is “personhood”: a moral status that must be earned by possessing sufficient cognitive capacities, such as being self-aware or valuing one’s own existence. Supporters of personhood theory argue that human beings who are not persons do not have the right to life and can be treated ethically as mere natural resources. And this is held to be true at both ends of life’s spectrum. Thus, articles in medical and bioethics journals around the world have urged that human beings diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state can ethically be harvested for their organs because they have permanently lost their personhood, while creating embryos through cloning for the purpose of stem-cell research is acceptable ethically because embryos have not yet attained personhood.
Meanwhile, many philosophical materialists deny that species distinctions are even real, given that most of our genes are shared by other mammals, opening the door in some minds to using the most weak and vulnerable people in place of animals in medical research. Then there are the so-called deep ecologists who misanthropically claim that we are a vermin species infecting the living Gaia, the solution to which is a radical reduction of human population to fewer than 1 billion.
It is into this ethical wind shear that George and Tollefsen jump in defense of the moral value of all human life. They do this powerfully by openly asserting the absolute moral equality of what many consider the least of human organisms: the early embryo.
Their apologia begins with proof of the biological humanity of the embryo from the moment it comes into being at the conclusion of fertilization. (The fertilized egg is actually not an egg at all: It is a one-celled embryo known as a zygote.) At one time such a defense would have been unnecessary. Embryology and basic biology textbooks clearly taught the simple scientific truth that human life begins at conception. But then along came the abortion debate and the potential to garner medical and scientific benefits from the instrumental use of the earliest embryos, and that which was once deemed biologically uncontroversial suddenly became the subject of heated debate.
After discussing the mechanics by which the sperm and egg merge and in the process are subsumed into the embryo, George and Tollefsen identify the biological nature of the new entity that has thus come into existence:
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 whole living member of the species Homo sapiens, 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 its own integral organic functioning, develop himself or herself to the next more mature developmental stage, i.e. fetal stage. The embryonic, fetal, 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-celled organism (a zygote) and develops, if all goes well, into adulthood many years later.
New and novel definitions of embryos exist, of course, and the authors rebut them all. For example, some claim that the embryo doesn’t arise until it implants in a uterus. But this is, biologically, nonsense. Implantation doesn’t make a new entity that did not exist previously; fertilization does. Implantation merely enables the embryo to remain in a suitable environment for continued growth via the soon-to-come creation of its first vital organ — namely, the placenta. Nor is the embryo merely a bunch of cells equivalent to a mole before implantation, as other advocates assert. It’s a fully integrated and self-sustaining organism that begins developing from the moment it comes into being.
Having proved that the human embryo is indeed human life, the authors readily acknowledge that the biology of the matter does not settle the moral question. Indeed, establishing moral worth is not a job for science, but belongs rightly in the realms of philosophy and morality, areas of analysis to which they devote the balance of the book.
In tackling these matters, the authors present a good mini-seminar on “dualism,” which holds that “the kind of being we are” is “substantially different from the human organism” itself. For example, the authors explain that the beliefs of utilitarian bioethicists assert a “person-body” dualism, that is, they separate the biological human organism from the moral entity — the person — with only the latter having true value. Others, following in the intellectual footsteps of Plato, perceive a soul-body dualism. Descartes and his philosophical progeny assert the presence of a mind-body dualism (I think, therefore I am). And some distinguish the brain from the body, with the moral value of our beings centered in our frontal lobes.
The authors reject dualism in all its forms. And this leads them to their moral conclusion, which can be very briefly summarized as follows: “We are by nature,” they write, “human animals,” by which they mean to say that we are “bodily beings.” This means we have a unitary, not dual, nature. This nature is, among other attributes, rational. As a consequence, unlike any other species, we also are persons from the moment we come into existence. And it is our intrinsic personhood that gives each of our lives intrinsic value from its beginning until the very end. The authors write:
It seems to us that the natural human capacities for reason and freedom are fundamental to the dignity of human beings — the dignity that is protected by human rights. The basic goods of human nature are the goods of a rational creature, a creature who, unless impaired or prevented from doing so, naturally develops capacities for deliberation, judgment, and choice. These capacities are godlike (in a limited way, or course) . . . the power to be an uncaused causing. This is the power to envisage a possible state of affairs, to grasp the value of bringing it into being, and then to act by choice, and not merely impulse or instinct, to bring it into being.
To which their detractors will sniff: So what? While most human beings exhibit these capacities at any given time — and hence have the moral value that George and Tollefsen attribute to all human beings — not all members of the species Homo sapiens are so capable. Early embryos have no brain or nervous system, for example, and fetuses are not consciously aware. Some human beings who have lived personal existences lose these capacities. And when they do, they lose the value conveyed by personhood.
Not so fast, George and Tollefsen rejoin. Our value is objective, not subjective. Each of us possesses a “human nature,” as a “rational animal.” Our dignity doesn’t depend on the capacities of the individual, and personhood is not something we acquire along the way. It comes with the package, meaning our entire species is steeped in dignity and moral value, attributes that are intrinsic to our very nature as human beings. The fact that some of us have not yet developed, or have lost, our natural capacities is thus irrelevant to our moral status.
Moreover, understanding and accepting this philosophical point is the condition precedent to the recognition of universal human rights. This seems incapable of refutation. After all, if each of us has to earn his value moment-by-moment — as personhood theorists would have it — then universal human rights become oxymoronic, since our respective value is relative to our capacities at any given time.
Having demonstrated forcefully that the human embryo is biologically a human being from the moment of conception, and having strongly argued that every human being is ipso facto a person, the authors draw some important conclusions: All innocent human beings have a right to life; destructive embryonic-stem-cell research and human cloning are wrong, because they violate the bodily integrity and right to life of the nascent human person. Even though these biotechnological techniques could lead to scientific advancement and potential medical treatments, the authors assert (quoting Kant) that each of us must always be considered an end, never a means.
There remains the question of abortion. Some readers may be disappointed to learn that the authors generally leave it alone; but sufficient for each day are its own troubles. The emotional and incendiary nature of the abortion debate — the arguments on both sides of which everyone knows by heart — would have simply overwhelmed the delicately nuanced and generally neglected philosophical territory explored in Embryo. The authors were wise to leave that discussion for another book.
Powerful forces seek to knock human life off of the pedestal of exceptionalism. Many who stand against the resulting cultural riptide have too often struggled to mount a scientifically valid, entirely secular, and philosophically coherent rebuttal. This important task just became much easier with the publication of George and Tollefsen’s Embryo, an important and powerful contribution in “defense of human life.”
Mr. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. He is currently writing a book about the animal-rights movement.
