Peter Singer takes Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart to task for saying we should not treat early human beings as lab animals ("Why we should ignore the Catholic Church on stem cells", on this page last Friday[29 March 2002]). Singer's main concern seems to be with lab animals, which he thinks are worth more than many human beings.

Singer does not consider most of the archbishop's points: that ransacking tiny humans while still alive is a serious harm; that there are ways of obtaining stem cells (from adults and placenta) that harm no one and actually cure; that rather than caving in to threats and pragmatism, we should focus research energies on the most promising alternatives; that Victoria should lead in ethical best-practice rather than follow states with a free-firing zone on embryonic human beings; and that embryo experimentation will be divisive and undermine reverence for human life.

Singer offers two arguments. First, embryos lack the capacities that earn us respect (brain, consciousness, preferences, ability to love and plan): they have not yet achieved enough to matter. Second, they are surplus, unwanted, leftovers.

Which capacities - and whether capacities - make us intrinsically worthy of respect is philosophically controversial: Singer's test for personhood would exclude not just embryos, but the unborn, newborn and severely handicapped. But every embryo is someone's child: try telling a woman grieving over a miscarriage that her embryo is worth less than a rat and is an ideal laboratory tool, as Singer suggests.
History recounts shameful stories of excluding those lacking the requisite capacities and not worth our respect: slaves, blacks, women, Jews, the handicapped, Gypsies. Archbishop Hart's concern to be inclusive, to recognise the claims of each and every human being to our protection and compassion, is surely Christianity at its best. Many secular philosophies agree: what makes humans worthy of respect - never proper targets of lethal experimentation for advantage to others - is not passing the entrance exam for some elite school for persons only. Rather, it is because they are one of us, our kith and kin.


However affectionately disposed Singer says he feels towards rats, they can never grow up to be philosophers, geneticists, bishops - they lack the inherent nature, organisation, soul, call it what you will. The only beings that have that special something are human beings, and they have it from conception until death.
But, says Singer, human or not, these embryos are unwanted. History is terribly scarred by stories of the unwanted. How often has one group decided another is not only less than human but also surplus? And if surplus, then useable and disposable.


The pattern of excluding and then using people is often accompanied by indifference to dissent. Singer suggests that, as leader of a particular religious group, Archbishop Hart should be ignored by a pluralist society. He fails to mention that Hart has been joined in his call by leaders of all major religions in Australia, as well as scientific, professional and community leaders of various persuasions. Only the most narrow, dogmatic secularism would exclude such views from consideration and call this respect for pluralism.


Singer has long been the leading apologist for radical medical research and social experimentation: last year, bestiality; before that, infanticide and euthanasia on demand; now, embryo farming and cannibalisation.
But there is a difference between being radical and being reckless.

Singer's science-fiction bioethics increasingly alienates his embryologist friends from ordinary opinion. Of course, such views will be heard in any free society.

But views premised on dogmatic secularism deserve no more weight than the views of the majority who still believe in the soul and the image of God; and no more weight than the views of those who for good philosophical reasons long ago discarded Singer's very '70s pop utilitarianism.


The common justification for destroying embryos is saving other people's lives. But the real motives are complex: there is clearly deep unease about freezers full of IVF embryos. We've got to do something with these early human lives - so ashamed are we at having created them for nothing. So to appease our consciences we'll use the leftovers in the fridge for therapies. No one feels bad about something therapeutic.

But let's be honest. What Singer and others advocate as medical therapy is not medical at all: a defining principle of medicine for more than 2000 years has been first do no harm. As the World Medical Association's modern Hippocratic oath declares: "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the moment of conception."


However infuriating it is to those who would remake medicine in their own image, true medicine is never about destroying human life, whatever the advantages. Science's greatest achievements have always been ones that respect the dignity of every human person.

No doubt the church will continue to call for the highest ethical standards in medical research. That will continue to aggravate those who prefer economic advantage, unfettered autonomy and glamour science to the hard slog of research that is morally accountable.

But it is surely the task of our religious leaders to have the bigger picture always in view, so that when the very young, the unwanted, the voiceless and those called surplus are at risk, there is someone to speak for them.


Reverend Anthony Fisher is professor of bioethics at the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne.

 

© kwl.com.au 2002