Abstract
Some critics claim that modern biology has debunked the prohibition of abortion and restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research by blurring the line between humans and non-human animals. These debunking arguments depend on the premise that an organism can be wronged only if it has conscious interests. After I criticize this premise, I argue that people should not harvest stem cells in a way that kills an organism with a rational nature. An organism has a rational nature whenever it is ordered towards using reason, in the sense of evaluating different reasons for its actions and beliefs. Contrary to some critics, the idea of a rational nature does not depend on any theological premises. I conclude by applying the rule about killing an organism with a rational nature to two proposed techniques for producing stem cells: using altered nuclear transfer and creating animal-human chimeras. Whether an entity produced by these techniques has a rational nature depends on the details of the technique.
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Notes
- 1.
At the time of writing, a Google search for “opponents of stem cell research” yields over 14,000 hits.
- 2.
This analogy is a modified version of an analogy from Robert George and Patrick Lee (2005, 91): “If we were to contemplate killing mentally retarded infants to obtain transplantable organs, no one would characterize the resulting controversy as a debate ‘about organ transplantation.’ The dispute would properly be characterized as a debate about the ethics of killing retarded children to harvest their vital organs.”
- 3.
For robust philosophical defenses of the assumption that a human embryo is morally similar to a human adult, see David and Rose Hershenov’s and John R. Meyer’s respective chapters in this volume.
- 4.
George and Lee (2008) argue that common beliefs about killing embryos—and about euthanasia, sexual activity, and other issues—depend on a dualistic view that identifies a human person as the subject of conscious experiences, not as a biological organism. I agree that many people assume this dualistic view, but it does not explain why many people assume that only religious beliefs can support opposition to killing embryos. Someone can believe an embryo is a human person, but deny that taking stem cells from the embryo is wrong. For example, Judith Jarvis Thomson (1995) compares the right to life with the right to vote, arguing that as a child does not have the right to vote but will develop into someone who has that right, a “fertilized egg” (her term for the product of conception ) does not have the right to life but will grow into someone who has that right. Like George and Lee (2008, pp. 134–5), I do not find Thomson’s analogy persuasive, because the right to vote depends an accidental properties, while the right to life depends on an organism’s nature (or so I argue below). Still, her analogy does not assume a dualistic view of human persons. She can agree that every human person once was an embryo and still defend killing the embryo, as one can agree that every eligible voter once was a child and still deny that children have a right to vote.
- 5.
Labels like “consequentialist” and “deontologist” often cause more confusion than clarity, but my argument does not need to distinguish different definitions or different versions of each approach.
- 6.
To allay concerns about paternalism, I should add that the natural law tradition does not require the state to force people to fulfill their potential. Squandering one’s potential—e.g., by remaining ignorant—might be morally wrong, but few people would say that the state should force adults to study algebra or read Shakespeare. Still, basic education through at least part of high school is legally mandated throughout the United States.
- 7.
For a more thorough argument that evolutionary theory does not exclude standards of good and bad, see Foot (2001), esp. Chapters 2 and 3. Foot argues that “moral judgement of human actions and dispositions is one example of a genre of evaluation itself actually characterized by the fact that its objects are living things” (p. 4). In an interview about her work, she explains, “The move from plants to animals and the move from animals and human beings are similar. You have different possibilities, different ways of managing, different needs, and there is not the slightest ground for saying: ‘Oh moral goodness, now that must be something that we judge quite differently’” (Voorhoeve 2009, p. 99).
- 8.
In this chapter, I take no position on the order of discovering theoretical and practical truths—e.g., whether someone can first know that humans are naturally playful and then conclude that play is good for humans, or whether someone can know that humans are naturally playful only by first knowing that play is good for humans. Natural law theorists disagree about how someone can discover what is good for humans, but they agree that what is good for humans is what fulfills their nature.
- 9.
In this chapter, I say little about non-human animals, but denying that an animal has a rational nature does not exclude the possibility of treating the animal wrongly. One need not see moral status as all-or-nothing.
- 10.
For discussion of cases of anencephalic human fetuses and neonates, see the essays by Charles Camosy and John Paul Slosar, Mark Repenshek, Elliott Bedford, and Emily Trancik in this volume.
- 11.
Someone could argue that chimpanzees and other non-human animals already have a rational nature. I claim no expertise in animal psychology, and I will not analyze questions about animal rights in this chapter. If apes have a rational nature , then one should not use apes or ape-human chimeras as sources of stem cells.
- 12.
For some specific criteria to determine whether a chimera’s potential makes it morally similar to a human being, see Eberl and Ballard (2009). They identify four criteria: (1) the amount of human cells grafted onto the chimera, (2) the timing of engraftment in the chimera’s development, (3) the types of human cells engrafted, and (4) the evolutionary relationship between humans and the other animal used to make the chimera.
- 13.
I thank Jason Eberl and an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Masek, L. (2017). The Moral Status of Human Embryos and Other Possible Sources of Stem Cells. In: Eberl, J. (eds) Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics. Philosophy and Medicine(), vol 127. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55766-3_22
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