Nature rejects idea of "human dignity"

Scientists used to know that answers to questions of morality were outside the scope of science. Collect data, make discoveries about our world and leave the ethics to philosophers, historians, theologians and lawmakers. Of course scientists can have an opinion on such things. We all should. But their scientific knowledge does not make them experts on issues of morality.

So when I read this in a Nature editorial, it left me scratching my head:

Dignity as a concept cannot be a director of moral judgement.

Micahel Cook has a great commentary on this editorial. It is FULL of great stuff, I recommend reading the whole thing. I will leave you with a couple of great quotes:

So it was dismaying to discover that Nature has discarded the concept of "human dignity" as unworthy of mature, intelligent argument. According to an editorial published earlier this month, it is a contradictory, "notoriously subjective" and "slippery" concept. In four glib paragraphs, it jettisons 2,500 years of Western civilisation, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and the constitutions of numerous countries....

However, underlying Nature’s rejection of human dignity is something else. Human dignity is a mainstay of arguments against research on embryos. As it is commonly understood, human dignity is indivisible. You cannot affirm that a black African is a human being and then pass laws to make him a slave. You cannot affirm that the elderly are fully human and pass laws to euthanase everyone over 85.

The problem for stem cell scientists and their boosters, is that the embryo is clearly human. It has the full human genome and barring any mishaps, it will someday become successively a foetus, a baby, a child, and an adult. It is a human being in an embryonic stage of development....

The consequences of rejecting centuries of human dignity and replacing it with a self-serving, gimcrack theory are momentous. Embryos may be small but upon them rests our dignity, too.