Its about who's human

Sunday, November 19. 2006

I don't know who Patrick McIlheran is, but I think I am in love. (Just don't tell my husband!) McIlheran's piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled "The hot button's hot since it's about who's human" is a masterpiece. He nails it. Here are some of my favorite gems:

Edward Furton, an on-call ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, says the 24-hour hotline - they really have one - gets calls from people with doubts about just that. "They say, 'These are my offspring, my children. What should I do with them?' " Presumably the callers are Catholics, whose church has for 25 years warned that bad things will come of in vitro fertilization. Its moral reasoning predicted consequences that a couple, focused on the expediency of getting pregnant, didn't see.

How very, very true. Here is another. On therapeutic cloning:

But it makes a human creature that looks just as we all did once. Whether the creature really is a human being is beyond the scope of science, say backers of such research. "Everyone has a personal stance," one told me. But it's disquieting when their main argument says the embryo isn't human simply because researchers don't want it to be and choose not to let it grow to birth in a woman's womb.
This amounts to defining humanity as, "You're nobody 'til somebody loves you."

And finally:

If one's humanity rests on a social decision, all rights are at risk. If it suits society to decide eight cells aren't enough to make an embryo human, will 16 cells do? 32? 128? Six pounds and wailing isn't enough for ethicists who talk of euthanizing disabled babies. Down this road lie all the horrors in which some races or classes or running dogs of capitalism weren't seen as human enough to live.

Well said Mr. McIlheran, well said!

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Cloning at 18:32 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

For me, moral questions such as stem-cell research turn upon whether suffering is caused. In this case, clearly none is. The embryos have no nervous system. But that's not an issue discussed publicly. The issue is, are they human? If you are an absolutist moralist, you say, "These cells are human, and therefore they deserve some kind of special moral treatment." Absolutist morality doesn't have to come from religion, but it usually does.

We slaughter nonhuman animals in factory farms, and they do have nervous systems and do suffer. People of faith are not very interested in their suffering. And if you wonder whether I believe humans have different moral significance than say, a cow, the answer would be yes. Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.

And I wouldn't tell your husband if I were you either, Paddy "Putzmeister" McIlheran sounds like a rather ignorant man - just Google him and be enlightened.

Cheers,
Blast

#1 Blast O. Cyst on 2006-11-20 07:33 (Reply)

Blast,

Thanks for commenting.

As you can imagine I am not a fan of the "capacity for suffering" argument. What suffering? Emotional? Physical? If we can experiment on human subjects that do not have the ability to suffer, then are humans that are unconscious fair game? What about fetuses? Can we experiment on them? At what point do they suffer? I don't believe "suffering" alone is a sufficient criteria to make good public policy on human experimentation.

Also, just because some people of faith do not concern themselves with animal suffering, doesn't mean the argument that human embryos deserve protection is not valid.

As for Paddy McIheran's mental capacity, I don't know, he seems to me to be pretty intelligent on this issue.

#2 Rebecca on 2006-11-20 08:25 (Reply)

Isn't death, by definition, "suffering"? Further comments on another inane statement further down.

#2.1 CB (Homepage) on 2006-12-03 08:34 (Reply)

Rebecca

Patrick McIlheran’s claims are the same tired old arguments trotted out every time by well-meaning ideologues. But many of his statements are devoid of meaningful content. For example:

PI: This amounts to defining humanity as, "You're nobody 'til somebody loves you."

In a sense, this perspective is not incorrect, if by “love” you mean proper socialization. There is a very long history of research on feral children that has showed these children lack the capacity to become recognizable persons. Of course feral children are still homo sapiens, but lack many of the basic requirements for something like a loving relationship, e.g. language.

PI: If one’s humanity rests on a social decision, all rights are at risk.

Rights are, by definition, social conventions. Therefore this statement is a contradiction. Even if you could somehow argue that rights are not social (what would they be then?), that would probably still not stop things like genocide or hate crimes. Rights will always be at risk regardless of their ontologies.

#3 thom on 2006-11-20 08:53 (Reply)

Thom,

I appreciate you perpective, but I disagree with your assessment. I am no philosopher, so bear with me.

I think you are making McIlheran's point. Feral children are still human children and still have humanity regardless of whether or not they have been loved or how socially adept they are.

Also, I disagree that rights are a social convention and so did America's founding fathers:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

Our rights are immutable, it is society's job to make sure those rights are upheld.

#4 Rebecca on 2006-11-20 09:08 (Reply)

Rebecca

Thanks for your reply. As for the first question, I am certainly not making McIlheran’s point, because it is precisely the definition of “humanity” that we are debating. I don’t for a moment doubt that feral children are homo sapiens. That is a scientific classification that provides no help in determining the moral status of the entity. McIlerhan (and you as well) are conflating a scientific definition (humanity = homo sapiens) with a moral claim (humanity = dignity). This is a version of the naturalistic fallacy – that scientific objects have inherent moral qualities.

As for the second point, I don’t think you want to make the “Founding Fathers” argument. By that I mean, if you agree with their definition of rights, then you agree (by implication) with their conclusions, e.g. not all humans (specifically non-white people) possess these “immutable” rights that you defend. It’s very bad philosophy to simply pick and choose what versions of rights you agree with, without considering the implications of the worldviews you are implicitly or explicitly endorsing.

#5 thom on 2006-11-20 11:55 (Reply)

Thom, I think we are actually agreeing on the humanity issue. As a scientist, I understand that science conveys no moral worth to a human organism. It can't. And shouldn't. That doesn't mean human organisms have no worth. Just because science has no moral judegments, doesn't mean moral judgements shouldn't be made. As a Catholic, I know that human organisms have innate dignity. Like it or not this is the prism with which I view any human organism. But the religious are not the only ones who believe that just being a human organism comes with certain rights. There are plenty of secularists that believe the same simply because by not doing so, it puts anyone who doesn't fall into the "human being" definition du jour at risk for exploitation.

As for the founding fathers, of course some held slaves and they were wrong for doing so, but I take the Declaration of Independence at its word: that we are all given inalienable rights by our Creator, not by other men. That was the idea upon which this country was founded. That is also the view of the Catholic Church.

#6 Rebecca on 2006-11-20 12:18 (Reply)

Oh and you all know I was being facetious about the "being in love" thing right? Just trying to keep things interesting!

#7 Rebecca on 2006-11-20 13:29 (Reply)

I can only assume that those of you who think that "suffering" is the sole criterion of whether or not destruction is acceptable are cool with newborns being smothered in their sleep. No suffering, no foul, eh?

And, whether we're of faith or not, many of us who oppose destroying embryonic human beings are also opposed to the killing and/or harming of non-human animals. I've been a vegetarian (with canvas shoes) since 1993, if that does anything for ya.

#8 Brian on 2006-11-20 14:44 (Reply)

Rebecca

I appreciate your thoughtful answers. I agree with you that scientific and moral claims are different and should not be conflated. One thing that has always troubled me about the inherent dignity argument – it means that it must apply to all humans all the time. Therefore Stalin has dignity, and O.J. Simpson has dignity. I’m not comfortable with that notion.

Well if you believe rights come from the divine creator, I highly doubt that I’ll be able to convince you otherwise. However, I did not mean that because the founding fathers owned slaves they were bad people. Rather, I was pointing out that you can’t pick and choose elements of political philosophy that you agree with from different historical times. The result is an incoherent mishmash that only serves as some kind of psychological comfort food.

#9 thom on 2006-11-21 08:25 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry