Political Science

In the pursuit of utopia, Obama pretends to divorce science from politics

By Kevin M. Neylan

Last week, a deluge of ink was spilled in praise of President Obama’s decision to lift the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research imposed by former President Bush. Mr. Bush had allowed federal funds to aid research performed on the twenty or so embryonic stem cell colonies created prior to his election, but he refused to grant federal tax dollars to support the creation of new human embryos for the sole purpose of research and experimentation. President Obama’s decision will enable scientists who receive federal money to work on hundreds of newly created embryonic stem cell lines, and clears the way for many more to be created and destroyed in the future. The New York Times, among others, has urged Congress to open the door even wider by repealing the so-called Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits federal funds from supporting experiments that destroy human embryos or create embryos specifically for research purposes.

Because embryonic stem cells can be developed into any type of cell or tissue in the body, scientists speculate that they may be useful in developing treatments or cures for illnesses such as diabetes, Parkinson’s and heart disease. However, the president warned that the full promise of embryonic stem cell research is unknown and should not be overstated.

Nevertheless, with characteristic grandiloquence Mr. Obama declared boldly that his administration will “make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.” He pledged to restore “scientific integrity to government decision-making,” evidently by paring the outmoded concerns of bourgeois morality from the life-enhancing tree of scientific knowledge. The president’s “enlightened stance,” gushed the Times, “ends a long, bleak period in which the moral objections of religious conservatives were allowed to constrain the progress of a medically important science.” As Oliver Wendell Holmes might have remarked, with chilling pertinence, eight years of imbecility are enough.

Lest we get too excited, at the same time the president announced the recrudescence of reason, the triumph of Science over Scientology—for is there really anything in between?—with his next breath he cautioned us that the thousands of conceived-to-be-destroyed human embryos will never lead to practices such as cloning for human reproduction. “[Human cloning],” Mr. Obama decreed, “is dangerous, profoundly wrong and has no place in our society or any society.” That crude assertion of moral dogma sounds suspiciously ideological to me. But I digress. After all, we can only create utopia one step at a time.

But what exactly are the moral objections to harvesting human embryos for the sole purpose of experimentation and research? What is it about President Obama’s promise to liberate the path of scientific progress from nagging ideological constraints that has the editorial boards of the Times and the Crimson (“Cell-ebration” read the Crimson’s staff editorial last Monday) so effusive? 

It is of course conceivable that embryonic stem cell research will lead to new cures, even though billions of dollars of private and state funding have already been expended over the past decade without producing a single therapeutic result. And never mind the fact that innocent human life must be destroyed in the process. At least the Crimson acknowledged this all-important scruple, however dismissively, while the Times would not deign even to print such a blatantly benighted objection. 

“The use of [embryonic] stem cells is not a destruction of human life,” the Crimson’s ideological, er, editorial board, instructs us. The philosophers continue: “The embryos from which these cells are cultivated are merely a collection of cells—with no moral status as persons… Yet, the use of this collection of cells could have life-saving implications.”

Human embryos are indeed a collection of cells, as are you and I, though much smaller. But as early as 1970 geneticists concluded that, “In all essential respects the individual is who he is going to become from the moment of impregnation… Thereafter, his subsequent development cannot be described as becoming someone he now is not… Genetics teaches us that we were from the beginning what we essentially are today in every cell and in every generally human attribute and in every individual attribute.” In other words, the human embryos that will be destroyed during these experiments are nothing short of unique individuals, genetically equivalent to twenty-year-old college students and even fifty-year-old presidents. As Paul Ramsey concludes, “Any unique sanctity or dignity we have cannot be because we are any larger than the period at the end of a sentence.” The evidence means, decisively, that human embryos’ “moral status as persons” cannot derive from their genetic composition—apolitical science alone cannot tell us which rights they possess.

So if science is unable to make morally relevant distinctions between collections of developing cells, who then should determine which globs of human cells deserve the protection of the law? And by what criteria? If experimenting on cancer patients or people with Alzheimer’s could have life saving implications, shouldn’t we at least try? They are going to die anyway, their lives have no potential (less, even, than embryos), they serve no utility; why should simpleminded moral objections constrain the progress of what could be a medically important science? President Obama has articulated clearly that scientific integrity compels us to follow science wherever it might lead, with no limits, because limits are political. So why should we limit ourselves to human embryos? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that embryos cannot vote, while most cancer patients can; but that smacks of politics, and obviously our current administration is above stale old politics.

If it is not already apparent, even more is at stake here than the destruction of human embryos. Indeed the crucial point is this: President Obama’s justification, the fact that millions of Americans “have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research… [because] the potential it offers is great,” plainly establishes the State as the ultimate source of rights, the ultimate font of morality. It is obviously not un-ideological science, for science has shown that human embryos are genetically equivalent to the rest of us. Nor can we cling any longer to the fiction that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. No, if that were true the State would have no authority to perform crass Benthamite calculations and declare that one set of guiltless humans must forfeit their lives for the sake of another. Rather, so long as the State embodies the morality of the community, once the State determines that the potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research (or research on any other group) outweigh whatever harms attend the destruction of human life, then State sanctioned destruction is by pure definition moral. There is no morality outside the State, thus the State cannot act immorally.

But alas, sizable portions of the masses still cherish pre-modern delusions of personal freedoms. So, to ease their foolish discomfort at the thought of experimenting on human beings, contemporary ideologues find it politically expedient simply to redefine what it means to be human in such a way as to preclude human embryos. Never mind that just a generation ago certain people tried something very similar, that is, to use “science” to redefine those who were obviously human, as not human, or less than human, or Untermenschen (was science politicized there?). But embryos are not obviously human, like we now understand Jews, Slavs, and the mentally handicapped to be: embryos cannot speak, they cannot write, they have no significant life experiences, so what is all the fuss about? We as a progressive society can destroy them, doing so might prove beneficial, therefore, we should, bourgeois ideals of individual liberty be damned.

I guess it is just “religion” to say that human beings should not be created and destroyed in pursuit of some distant utopia. And religion is stupid, so that argument and the rude folk who make it should be simply ignored, as should the scientific evidence they cite. (Politics, anyone?) Or, as Mr. Obama put it, “I understand their concerns, and we must respect their point of view.” Well thanks Mr. President. Your hollow respect is appreciated, but the principles just established are cause for much concern.