72 Sermon Illustrations on Medical Ethics

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Medical ethics in Christian preaching addresses the moral challenges posed by advances in medicine and biotechnology, emphasizing the sanctity and dignity of human life (Psalm 139:13-16). Illustrations often employ vivid images contrasting the 'culture of life' with the 'culture of death,' highlighting issues like cloning, end-of-life decisions, and the limits of scientific control over human life (Jeremiah 1:5).

Merely Helping Them On Their Way

Job 3:20

Peter Rosier, a successful Florida pathologist, and his wife Patricia plotted her death. She had lung cancer. She took sleeping pills, which did not work. He then gave her a double dose of morphine. But her stepfather, Vincent Delman, confessed that that did not work either, so he smothered her with a pillow.

Hemlock Society advocates freedom to do this, and argues doctors do it all the time to help patients rest "comfortably." Rosier has no doubts about what he did. "[Her] decision to end her own life had to do with minimizing the pain to those around her, and, perhaps, to herself. I merely helped her on her way." Florida now has two out of the three Americans in jail for mercy killing.

Do Not Cast Me Off In the Time of Old Age: the Challenge of the Aged, Part 2

Ruth 4:15

In the January 2006 edition of COMMENTARY, bioethicists Eric Cohen and Leon R. Kass offer a compelling essay on the challenge represented by millions of the aged among us. In “Cast Me Not Off in Old Age,” they warn that we are now witnessing the development of a “mass geriatric society” which will present this country with massive economic, social, medical, political, and ethical challenges.

Recognizing that, many Americans argue that there must be some better way to confront these challenges, and all too many appear willing to redefine human dignity in terms of quality of life, autonomous choice, and the competing interests of generations.

Indeed, some are ready to argue for a “duty to die” that assumes a responsibility for the elderly to get out of the way. Far more are ready to assume that the death of the elderly is at least preferable to long-term debility and decline. Both of these assumptions run into direct conflict with the Christian worldview and the Bible's teachings regarding reverence for life and respect for the aged. Confronting these assumptions will require Christian courage as well as keen Christian thinking. This challenge will not wait.

In light of these challenges, Cohen and Kass suggest two false “solutions” that may appeal today to Americans who take opposing sides on these issues.

First, the authors dismiss the argument that the problems of old age can simply be solved by medical technology. They cite Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the top official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who claimed last July that “Medicare can do so much more than give you dignity in old age.” Dr. McClellan claimed that Medicare can actually extend life, improve health, and save money by preventing and curing the diseases of old age.

Cohen and Kass dismiss this as “the medical gospel of healthy aging.” While accepting that persons can do much to make themselves healthier and to extend active and vigorous life, Cohen and Kass understand that life itself, even with medical treatments, involves limitations. It is foolish, they suggest, “to act and speak as if medical progress (whether in prevention or in cure) will liberate us from the realities of decline, debility, and death or from the unavoidable duties of caregiving at the end of life.” The authors insist that the paradox in modern aging is this: WE ARE VIGOROUS LONGER AND WE ARE INCAPACITATED LONGER.

Most tellingly, Cohen and Kass criticize much of the propaganda about old age now commonly advertised in our society. “Finally,” they note, “there is something weird about treating old age as a time of life when things should always be 'getting better.’ While aging affords some people new possibilities for learning and 'growth,' it also means -- eventually and inevitably -- the loss of one's vital powers. Some people may ride horses or climb mountains into their seventies and eighties, just like in the commercials for anti-arthritis medication, but such idealized images offer a partial and misleading picture of the realities of senescence, that series of small dyings on the way to death.”

The second “solution” Cohen and Kass rightly dismiss is the “legal gospel of the living will.” Returning to the case of Terri Schiavo, Cohen and Kass lament the fact that the significance of this tragedy for so many Americans was, as so many in the media insisted, the moral lesson that one should always have a written living will or “advance directive” to guide medical decisions once one is no longer in a capacity to speak for oneself.

With keen insight, Cohen and Kass point to the worldview of individual autonomy as the driving force behind the development of living wills and the current confidence in these documents as the “solution” to difficult issues at the end of life.

In the first place, Cohen and Kass recognize that living wills simply do not live up to their reputation. The documents are often legally unsustainable, and medical personnel are often unaware of such documents or unable to make decisions that are in any sense clearly based upon the desires of the patient who framed the document. They cite a study that indicated that decisions made by surrogates using living wills “were no more likely to reflect the patient's prior wishes than decisions made by family members judging on their own.”

Most important, Cohen and Kass understand that the inevitable bottom-line issue is the dignity of human life. While our society holds a general consensus concerning equal human worth when it comes to the healthy, Cohen and Kass argue that “this general agreement regarding equal human worth can disappear in some cases.” Specifically, “Although many continue to believe that every human life, regardless of debility, possesses equal dignity, others now argue openly that equal treatment for all is best advanced by not diverting precious resources to the severely disabled. Still others believe that the indignities of old age -- especially dementia -- belie all sanctimonious talk of 'equal worth.'“

In the end, Cohen and Kass argue for Americans to understand that there are better and worse ways to understand the challenge of aging. The worldview of personal autonomy corrupts the question by placing moral confidence in the real or perceived intentions of the patient, generally without regard to the larger moral context or to enduring moral principles.

As they argue, “The better way begins in thinking of ourselves less as wholly autonomous individuals than as members of families; in relinquishing our mistaken belief that medicine can miraculously liberate our loved ones or ourselves from debility and decline, and instead taking up our role as caregivers; and in abjuring the fantasy that we can control the manner and the hour of our dying, learning instead to accept death in its proper season as mortal beings are replaced and renewed by the generations that followed.”

This is a statement of moral insight that is deeply based in a biblical worldview and in an understanding of human dignity that is rooted in something larger than individual autonomy. The Christian worldview adds the absolute affirmation of human dignity at all stages of life, and in all conditions of life, whether young or old. Furthermore, the Christian worldview insists upon the respect due the aged as honored members of the family and of the larger society.

Without doubt, the rise of the “mass geriatric society” described by Cohen and Kass will present all Americans with a dramatic series of challenges. The church faces an even greater challenge -- to develop a theology of aging that is deeply rooted in the riches of Scripture and is directly relevant to the real-life challenges of growing old. Inevitably, a genuinely Christian vision of aging and the aged will represent a counter-thrust against the spirit of the age.

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This is part two of a two-part series.

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Human Dignity and the Limits of “Biocultural Literacy”

Even as Americans are coming to terms with the complexity of end-of-life issues and the challenges of medical technologies, the lack of a worldview consensus on these basic questions reveals a dangerous confusion at every level of our national life. Doctors, lawyers, philosophers, and the public at large are divided over the most basic questions of human dignity, human life, and how to make decisions of right and wrong when these are essentially questions of life and death.

The tragedy of Terri Schiavo catapulted these questions into the nation's consciousness. Nevertheless, it is by no means clear that the nation learned anything of significance through that tragedy and the attendant controversy. Indeed, a large number of Americans seem to be relieved that the tragedy of Terri Schiavo is safely out of mind and off the headlines.

Lennard J. Davis argues that the controversy over Terri Schiavo revealed a dangerous lack of “biocultural literacy” among the American people. Davis serves as Professor of English, Disability and Human Development, and Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he also directs Project Biocultures. The complexity of Davis's professorial title indicates something of the strangeness of his academic post.

In “Life, Death, and Biocultural Literacy,” published in the January 6, 2006 edition of THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, Davis argues that the absence of biocultural literacy in the academy and in the general public leaves us all unable to cope with some of our most pressing contemporary questions.

Davis begins his essay by looking back to Victorian literature in which novelists such as Charles Dickens portrayed death as the moment when one's identity “often comes to fruition.” He contrasts this with today's clinical context of death. “But while Dickens had metaphorical hearts and angels to enhance self-revelation at the time of death, we have ventilators, feeding tubes, and defibrillators. Death for us isn't so much a final revelation of identity as a series of decisions preceding a finality.” As Davis concludes, “Our sense of identity is much less clear than it was for people in the past.”

In that assessment, Davis is clearly on to something. Americans are no longer united in a worldview shaped by Christian truth that establishes identity and human dignity in Creation and in the reality of the image of God in every single human being.

Looking at the contemporary debate, Davis notes the contrast between liberal and conservative arguments. “Liberals might argue that one's identity ceases to exist with the loss of a certain level of consciousness, accompanied by the necessity of mechanical life support, such as a feeding tube and a ventilator.” On the other hand, “The religious right contends that one has an identity as long as one's heart is beating, regardless of one's cognitive function or the need for external life support.”

Accordingly, some persons looked at Terri Schiavo and responded with the fear that they might at some point be reduced to being a “vegetable” with no consciousness or personal identity, while others looked at the same situation and feared the termination of life while one's brain is still functioning and death is otherwise not imminent.

As Davis understands, a surge of interest in “living wills” was one practical result of the controversy. Nevertheless, these documents often fail to deliver on their promises, are often ignored by medical professionals, and often fail to protect the interests of the one who adopted the document in the first place.

Davis seems to believe that a greater depth of knowledge in all the related fields of medicine, technology, biology, religion, psychology, and law would lead to a better understanding of the moral questions involved in such crises. Beyond this, he would add disability studies and the relatively new field of bioethics.

There is undoubtedly some truth in his assessment. For example, when Davis asserts that most Americans “know very little about biology, don't keep up on recent developments in neurology, and barely know the difference between a coma and a persistent vegetative state,” he is clearly describing a reality we can recognize.

Yet, Davis's main concern is with the absence of an academic discipline that adequately integrates all the fields that have an interest in such questions. “The public historically has turned to scholars and researchers to inform difficult public debates,” he notes. “But it isn't really clear what part of the academy should be the go-to profession or department.”

The bioethicists are ready to offer their advice, even as philosophers and political theorists are ready to speak of such questions in terms of justice and liberal theory. Davis also suggests that the field of disability studies, which is “beginning to pull together several disciplines to address the philosophical, moral, legal, medical, and cultural questions emerging from the intersection of biotechnology and identity” can offer important advice.

At the same time, Davis doesn't believe that either of these academic disciplines is adequate to the task. The field of disability studies, he explains, “is fundamentally based on, among other things, the idea that people with disabilities should have autonomy over their own lives.” Bioethics, which emerged in recent years as an academic specialization, takes as its goal to promote a notion of patient autonomy as opposed to the previously unchallenged authority of the medical profession.”

The very fact that Davis has framed the debate in this manner demonstrates the inherent limitations of our concept of personal autonomy. For, as he is careful to observe, the bioethicists and the disability advocates generally ended up on opposite sides of the debate over Terri Schiavo. Though both were operating on a basic commitment to personal autonomy as the greatest good, the bioethicists tended to locate the autonomy in Terri Schiavo's supposed wish to avoid living in any state of diminished consciousness (at least according to her husband), while the disability advocates saw her as a symbol of what happens when those who are debilitated or disabled are assumed to lack the ability to act on their own behalf. As disability advocates saw Terri Schiavo's situation, here was an example of a human being denied a basic right to life on the basis of diminished capacity.

If nothing else, the controversy over Terri Schiavo demonstrated that personal autonomy is simply not a sufficient foundation for any medical ethic or understanding of human dignity.

Davis seems to understand this, at least in part. He cites the fact the bioethicists fear government intervention or the influence of religious groups because this might threaten to “muck up the principle of patient autonomy.” But, at the same time, he also explains that “autonomy is a somewhat limiting principle, despite its obvious utility, if you think of the issue not as what a legal guardian wants, or says a patient wants, but as what or how a society defines 'a life worth living.'“

As an answer to this lack of national consensus, Davis suggests the development of “biocultural literacy.” While this term is never fully defined in his essay, Davis obviously has in mind an integrative approach that would bring together political, cultural, medical, scientific, and religious implications of hard cases and matters of life and death.

One of the central problems in Davis's proposal is that his concept of biocultural literacy requires a simultaneous knowledge of so many disciplines and fields of study that no single individual, much less the man or woman on the street, can be expected to be conversant, much less an expert, on such matters. Nevertheless, the larger problem with this proposal is Davis's confidence that an academic field of study is the proper arena for such questions to be adjudicated and such decisions to be made.

His approach does promise key insights when it takes the form of cultural and theoretical analysis. In an interesting section of his essay, Davis attempts to identify some of the strengths, weaknesses, and inconsistencies of positions taken by both liberals and conservatives on these crucial issues. He cites the fact that conservatives historically have supported individual autonomy against the state and thus the Right “has generally opposed federal intervention in individual states' rights.” But in the case of Terri Schiavo, conservatives did seek federal intervention, arguing that Terri Schiavo's inherent right to live was far more important than her husband's supposed right to speak on her behalf in terms of moral autonomy.

“For the right in general and the religious right in particular, one's identity is based on the sanctity of life, extending to patients in comas or vegetative states, fetuses in the womb, and byproducts of fertilization such as stem cells and unused embryos,” Davis explains. “But any logician could inform the debate by pointing out the inconsistency between these positions and support for the death penalty, war, and even the eating of animals.”

If this is “biocultural literacy” we are in big trouble. Davis must be unaware of two millennia of Christian thinking on these issues that carefully makes distinctions between the very issues that he raises. If this is a demonstration of biocultural literacy at work, it is a dismal and embarrassing failure.

Davis also argues that, even as liberals favor autonomy with respect to the body and resist “the idea that the state should dictate how and what we do with our bodies,” it runs into conflict with its own basic principles when faced with the hard questions related to disability and those who are unable to express their own intentions in terms of personal autonomy. Furthermore, he rightly observes that, “because of biotechnical advances, the line between inside the womb and outside the womb has become somewhat arbitrary and largely a matter of conjecture.” So, on matters at the beginning of life as well as at its end, liberals should be forced to rethink their positions based upon developments in science and medicine.

In his essay, Davis is addressing himself to the academic community. “In the end, we are all poorly served by an academic community that does not promote biocultural literacy,” he argues. “As this century moves on, many issues the public needs to discuss will increasingly be tied to biotechnological advances that challenge our definitions of what it means to be human. We will need all the resources that we can command to come up with consistent, logical, and culturally relevant ways of conceiving of and bidding farewell to our bodies, ourselves.”

The Christian worldview, however, must press beyond a notion of “biocultural literacy.” If nothing else, Davis's article should assist serious Christians to understand the limitations of personal autonomy as the foundation of any ethical system -- much less an ethical system related to the excruciating questions that now arise at both the beginning and the end of life. The Christian worldview must point to a more comprehensive ethic -- something even more demanding than biocultural literacy -- that is based in a consistent affirmation of what it means for human beings to be made in the image of God and for all human life to be of sacred value -- without regard to an individual's ability to operate as a supposedly autonomous being.

Here again, we can foresee a confrontation between Christian and secular modes of thinking on important issues of public policy. Yet, there is more here than meets the eye, for this is also an opportunity for Christian witness, as thinking Christians should enter this debate ready to explain why we must define human beings in terms different from those of the secular academy. In its own way, this may be one of the most important avenues for Christian witness in our postmodern times.

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Life Unworthy of Life: Yesteryear Germans Would Be Proud

Even before the Nazi Party came to power, the doctors of Weimar Germany began to divide humanity into those who should live and those who should die. They developed the category of “life unworthy of life” in order to designate those whose infirmity, deformity, race or lifestyle rendered them subhuman in terms of rights.

Similarly, the eugenicists of the 20th century -- in America as well as in Europe -- divided humanity into the “fit” and the “unfit,” and called for more children from the fit, less from the unfit.

Now, word comes from London that a physician has used preimplantation genetic testing to allow a woman to become pregnant with a baby that is free of a breast cancer gene. In order to produce this baby, six embryos found to carry the gene were rejected.

As The Telegraph (London) explains:

“Only one other woman is believed to have become pregnant after undergoing the same screening technique, called pre-implantation diagnosis (PGD).

“Critics claim it is unethical because it means viable embryos are destroyed. There are also fears it could lead to the creation of ‘designer babies’ that are chosen for their looks or intelligence.

“The British woman said she felt she had to go through the invasive IVF treatment even though she and her husband are fertile in order to try and safeguard her child.”

The paper went so far as to label the child a “designer baby.” This is precisely what many ethicists fear. Viable human embryos were discarded because they were found to carry a genetic marker that involves a risk -- perhaps a significant risk -- of later disease.

Where does this stop? Proponents of the technology complain that using phrases like “designer baby” is unfair, since no current technology allows a parent to “order” a child complete with all chosen traits. But that complaint misses the point. The designation of any trait -- even the negative designation -- creates a designer baby. Someone has decided that some trait is unacceptable.

In this case it was a gene linked to cancer. What next? We already know that the vast majority of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted. How long before there is a preimplantation screen for that syndrome? Couples are now screening embryos for gender. How long before athletic ability or earning potential is linked to a gene? Blond hair? Blue eyes?

The Weimar doctors would be proud. The doctors behind this new technology assure us that their only concern is the improvement of human health. So did the Weimar doctors and the eugenicists. Health can be used as an argument for destroying life, it seems.

The tragedy is that vast millions of couples would almost surely take advantage of this technology should it become more widely available. The end would justify the means, they would rationalize.

The laboratory is now a dangerous place for human embryos. They can be destroyed for stem cell research, frozen pending sale, and rejected after genetic testing. This points to a very sad reality -- there is now a search and destroy mission targeting human embryos considered unworthy and unwanted.

Life unworthy of life. Where have we heard that before?

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #6742]

Superman and Utilitarianism: Kindly Ignoring the Argument

In 1995, Christopher Reeve tragically injured his spinal cord in a riding accident. The actor, who once portrayed Superman, is a quadriplegic. His life is now entirely dependent. Not only is Reeve unable to eat or wash or dress by himself, he can't even breathe by himself requiring technology and constant supervision to stay alive.

Reeve wants to walk again. Stem cells torn from cloned embryonic humans, he believes, will heal his spine. And so Christopher Reeve has become a vocal advocate of cloning and stem cell research.

On March 5, Reeve testified at the U.S. Senate. Echoing Jeremy Bentham, he made a thoroughly utilitarian argument in favor of cloning and embryonic stem cell research. Reeve said, "Our government is supposed to serve the greatest good for the greatest number." This is, at best, a naïve and, at worst, a dangerous argument coming from a man in a wheelchair.

Jonathan Imbody, of the Christian Medical Association, pointed this out in a letter to the WASHINGTON TIMES. Imbody wrote, "Sadly, Mr. Reeve did not seem to grasp the grim irony that severely disabled individuals like him would hardly fare well in the utilitarian calculus of anticipated benefit for the most people. Spending limited healthcare resources on intensive and expensive therapies to benefit a few would simply never pass the test. If public policy truly were reduced to 'the greatest good for the greatest number,' racism and exploitation would flourish, eugenics would rule, and the fittest and favored would be released once and for all from the burden of 'useless eaters.'"

Sound cold and calculating? It is! In utilitarianism cold calculations determine life and death. And if this were the utilitarian society Mr. Reeve advocates, he wouldn't be here to make his arguments. He would have been taken off life support, and the millions spent to sustain him would have helped thousands of other people with a better chance of being cured. And if money is to be used for the greatest number of people, medical help wouldn't go to people with spinal cord injuries; it would go to the millions with cancer.

Thankfully we don't live in that kind of utilitarian society. We live in one that still retains the dignity of life assured in the Christian worldview.

As Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops puts it, "Our government is not supposed to serve the greatest good for the greatest number. Totalitarian governments are supposed to do that. Our government is supposed to protect the vulnerable INDIVIDUAL from the rich and powerful who may find it expedient to forget his or her dignity."

So when your neighbors talk about all the emotional arguments by Reeve and others made for embryonic stem cell research, you can explain the irony -- that the people making these arguments wouldn't be around to make them, if we embrace the worldview they advocate, which cheapens human life. The funny thing about the secular worldview, as Mr. Reeve makes plain, is that the people advocating it can't live by it.

Take Action:

Urge your senator to cosponsor the Brownback-Landrieu total cloning ban, S. 1899. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to connect to your state's Senators' offices.

For further reading and information:

Visit the Council for Biotechnology website . To receive the Biotech Policy Update e-newsletter, send your request to .

"Bioethics in the New Century Resource Kit"

Gilbert Meilaender, BIOETHICS: A PRIMER FOR CHRISTIANS (Eerdmans, 1996).

Lynne M. Thompson, "Those Who Would Be King: The Perils of Man-Made Ethics," PHYSICIAN MAGAZINE, March/April 2002.

Jonathan Imbody, "Utilitarianism is not 'the American way,'" Letter-to-the-Editor, WASHINGTON TIMES, 8 March 2002.

Christopher Reeve's testimony can be read here .

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Spain Gives Rights To Apes

Job 5:23

The Spanish Parliament’s move to grant rights previously reserved for human beings to chimpanzees and other apes is a victory for those seeking to minimize the uniqueness of humanity, a bioethics specialist says.

An environmental committee in Spain’s legislature approved a resolution June 25 calling for the government to abide by the Great Apes Project, a 15-year-old campaign to grant the right to life, freedom and no torture to chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The measure has the support of a majority of members of Parliament and is expected to become law, according to Reuters News Service.

The Great Apes Project (GAP) is the brainchild of philosophers Peter Singer, a controversial ethics professor at Princeton University, and Paola Cavalieri, who founded it in 1993, Reuters reported.

GAP’s goal is not just to improve conditions for apes but “to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest,” Wesley Smith wrote on his weblog. Smith is a bioethicist, author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

“Once people accept that premise, Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable.

“In the world being born out of the ashes of the sanctity/equality of human life ethic, value will be subjective and rights temporary -- depending on one’s individual capacities rather than humanity,” Smith wrote. “And we will see apes ... being viewed as more important than some humans.”

The Spanish resolution will prohibit using apes in circuses, television commercials, films and harmful experiments, according to Reuters. It will not ban apes from being housed in zoos, but 70 percent of those facilities will need to be upgraded dramatically, backers of the measure said.

Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, called it “a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades.”

And it is only the beginning, Pozas told The Times of London. “We are seeking to break the species barrier -- we are just the point of the spear,” he said.

Passage of the Great Apes Project in full Parliament would be but the latest liberal bill to pass the Socialist-led government, which also legalized “gay marriage.” The Socialist Party took power in 2004 days after the Madrid train bombings. It retained power in an election earlier this year.

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Science Without Limits: Reinventing Parenthood

Recently, two University of Pennsylvania researchers announced findings that, in the words of the WASHINGTON POST, “could blur the biological line between fathers and mothers.”

Writing in the online journal SCIENCE, Hans Schoeler and Karin Huebner described how they turned ordinary mouse embryonic stem cells into eggs capable of being fertilized.

What’s more, the stem cells they used were from males. Thus, if the technique used by the two researchers is applicable to humans, it could be possible for a gay couple to have children “with one man contributing sperm and the other fresh eggs bearing his own genes.”

That raises a new question: Should the man who contributed the cells for the egg be recognized as the child’s “mother”? If not, WHAT is he?

Scientists are abuzz. John Eppig, a mouse geneticist, told the WASHINGTON POST that “the mind boggles with potential wild applications of this stuff.” Lee Silver, molecular biologist and bioethicist at Princeton, told the POST that the results “[break] down all the classic barriers in terms of sexual reproduction, with none of the problems of cloning.”

But others were less enthusiastic. Douglas Johnson of National Right to Life, for one, called the results a potential big step toward opening “human embryo farms.”

Johnson is right. But the even bigger threat comes from the hubris of researchers who feel free to “blur the biological lines between mothers and fathers.” Even the risk of fundamentally changing what it means to be human doesn’t seem to deter them.

It should, for even dyed-in-the-wool Darwinists would agree that sexual reproduction involving fathers AND mothers MUST serve some important purpose. They would recognize that the only animal species without distinct roles for the sexes in reproduction are lower species like amoebas and paramecium.

Darwinists like Stephen Pinker of MIT would affirm that the differences between male and female go beyond their roles in reproduction. They are different in many ways — physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Christians, of course, affirm all of this and more. The respective roles and contributions of both sexes are what Genesis is referring to when it says “male and female He created them.” The history and destiny of life is inextricably tied up in that phrase. It is sheer madness to tamper with the distinction.

Christians shouldn’t let anyone say that these concerns make us “Luddites” who fear technology. Bill McKibben, a science writer whom no one would call a Luddite, shares the same concerns. In his book, ENOUGH: STAYING HUMAN IN AN ENGINEERED AGE, he writes that the questions posed by biotechnology threaten to alter what it means to be human and are too important to be left to scientists. He asks, “Must we forever grow in reach and power.... Or can we, should we, ever say, ‘Enough’?”

Exactly — which is why BreakPoint keeps focusing on bioethics, which raises the most profound moral questions. Christians ought to sound the alarm now, before science without limits blurs lines that were meant to be distinct and achieves what C. S. Lewis called the “abolition of man.”

'Futile-Care' and the Culture of Death

Yesterday, I told you the story of Grandpa Reitsema in The Netherlands whose doctor, without consulting the family, ordered nurses to withhold food and water and to administer overdoses of morphine. He didn't act out of malice. Instead, as he told the family, “I was just helping him out.”

This story may make you glad that you don't live in The Netherlands -- that is, until you realize that American medicine is headed in the same direction.

According to Wesley Smith of the Discovery Institute, “futile-care” theory is “one of the most dangerous topics [under discussion] in contemporary bioethics.” “Futile-care” holds that “when a physician believes the quality of a patient's life is too low to justify life-sustaining treatment, the doctor is entitled to refuse care,” calling it “inappropriate.”

This judgment prevails over the patient's and family's wishes. As Smith puts it, “It is the equivalent of a hospital putting a sign over its entrance stating, 'We reserve the right to refuse service.'“

It is important to understand the worldview that drives the “futile-care” theory. Now, no one believes that a doctor should be required to give a patient “physiologically futile” treatment -- prescribing useless therapies just because the patient may demand it.

That's not what “futile-care” is about. It is about preventing treatment that does work, that is, treatment that prolongs life. In “futile-care” theory, “bioethicists and doctors unilaterally determine” which lives are worth prolonging. As Smith notes, in “futile-care” theory, what's regarded as futile isn't the treatment -- it's the patient.

And it's not just dying patients. One “futile-care” advocate told Smith that he would deny an otherwise-healthy eighty-year-old woman a mammogram. What, the advocate argued, would be the point of treatment at her age if a problem was discovered?

This should frighten us all because, above all, doctors are not infallible. People have recovered from conditions that doctors pronounced hopeless. Doctors aren't God -- but some are seeking to usurp His prerogatives.

Even more frightening is that hospitals across the country are putting “futile-care” protocols in place. For instance, twenty-four of twenty-six California hospitals surveyed by the CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY OF HEALTH CARE ETHICS adopted “futile-care” protocols. Bills have been introduced at the federal and state level to clarify the legality of these policies.

It's easy, from a financial perspective, to understand the appeal of “futile-care” theory. Patients “requiring intensive or extended care” are money-losers for hospitals. The rising cost of health care, especially within an aging population, increases the pressure for other hospitals to follow suit.

That's why Christians need to promote the sanctity of human life, because without a belief in the sanctity of life, all of our lives are potentially subject to a cost-benefit analysis. Only if we sustain the belief that life is sacred, created in the image of God, can we hope to prevail against the utilitarian calculus that is taking over the practice of medicine.

Our embrace of the “culture of death” has left vulnerable people at the mercy of a stranger's subjective determination about the quality of their life. As in The Netherlands, our sick and elderly have good reason to tremble when, as Smith says, they hear someone say, “The doctor knows best.”

What Happens When the Majority Is Wrong?

Job 3:20

In 1994, voters in the state of Oregon narrowly approved the first law in the United States allowing physician-assisted suicide. Three years later, an attempt to repeal the law was defeated at the ballot box. It is clear that the majority of voters in the Beaver State believe a person has a right to decide when his or her life should end.

In 1999, the Oregon legislature voted to expand the coverage of the state-sponsored health plan to include physician-assisted suicide. In the state of Oregon not only can a person end his or her life with a doctor's help, but he or she also can have the government foot the bill for the "procedure."

On Wednesday, April 17, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones rejected an attempt by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to apply the Controlled Substance Act to Oregon doctors who use the physician-assisted suicide law to prescribe lethal doses of medication to those seeking to end their lives prematurely.

Ashcroft's decision held that assisted suicide is not a legitimate medical procedure, threatening to revoke the licenses of physicians who prescribed deadly doses of drugs to patients. Judge Jones disagreed with the attorney general and his ruling allows assisted suicide in Oregon to continue unfettered.

The majority is elated, asserting it is a victory for individual rights as well as the democratic process. The voters of Oregon have expressed their will not once but twice: If a person wants to choose the time, place and circumstance of his or her death, what business is it of the government? We are told that society is not harmed by such a decision.

One question: What if the voters in Oregon are wrong and their populist view concerning physician-assisted suicide is not a victory for an individual's right to die, but rather the next progression down the slippery slope toward forced euthanasia?

We must not too quickly forget the reality that occurred in Nazi Germany. In "Modern Fascism: The Liquidating of the Judeo-Christian Worldview," Gene Edward Vieth Jr. reminds us, "The first official legalized 'mercy killing' [in Nazi Germany] was the result of an emotional case brought before the Fuhrer himself. A baby named Knauer was born blind, missing a leg and part of a hand, and evidently mentally retarded. The father begged permission for the child to be put out of his misery. Hitler himself investigated and granted permission. More petitions followed."

Writing in "The Nazi Doctors," Robert Jay Lifton points out, "Of the five identifiable steps by which the Nazis carried out the principle of 'life unworthy of life,' coercive sterilization was the first. There followed the killing of 'impaired' children in hospitals; and then the killing of 'impaired adults,' in centers especially equipped with carbon monoxide gas. This project was extended (in the same killing centers) to 'impaired' inmates of concentration and extermination camps and, finally to mass killings, mostly of Jews, in the extermination camps themselves."

Those who favor physician-assisted suicide loudly declare, "No way infanticide and forced euthanasia will ever occur in the United States. We are too enlightened." They accuse people like me of knee-jerk reactions and of trying to impose our puritanical morality on the enlightened majority. Well, to that charge I have two words in reply: Peter Singer. Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. He espouses both infanticide and forced euthanasia. Singer, who is a radical utilitarian, believes that a life incapable of "full life" should not be prolonged. He holds that the good of society must be considered in determining whether a life is worth preserving.

Peter Singer is only one man. His views seem too radical for mainstream America. However, what if one man -- as wrong as his views might be -- over time is able influence a majority? What then?

In 1930, Germany embraced the Nazi Party. Shortly thereafter the leader of the party, Adolf Hitler, was appointed chancellor. On March 23, 1933, Hitler pressed the German cabinet to pass the Enabling Act that would result in him being named legal dictator -- and the demise of democracy in Germany.

The Enabling Act involved altering the German Constitution, requiring passage by a two-thirds majority of the Cabinet. Hitler needed 31 non-Nazis to vote in favor of the act in order for him to become dictator.

One lone voice spoke in opposition to Hitler's grab for power. Otto Wells, leader of the Social Democrats stood and took issue with the head of the Nazi Party. In the end, Wells' voice was ignored and the Enabling Act passed. Hitler became the dictator because that was the desire of the majority. One man influenced a majority. The rest, as they say, is history. And history has proved the majority was wrong.

A majority of voters in Oregon approve of physician-assisted suicide. Thankfully, this view is still a minority in America. If this ever changes, and the majority embraces the view that life is disposable, we will all suffer.

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(previous illustration with this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #22215)

Superbabies? - the Dangers of Cloning

This summer Dr. Lee Silver, author of REMAKING EDEN, predicted the first human clone would be born within a mere six years. And last month, scientist Richard Seed announced he plans to clone HIMSELF within two years. And there’s nothing to prevent him from doing it.

Congress has considered various measures to prevent the cloning of human beings, but so far there is no law against it. Christians need to be thinking now, seriously, about what will happen if human cloning takes place and about what our response ought to be before it becomes an accepted practice.

Consider why anyone would want a clone in the first place. Enthusiasts for genetic engineering talk about the prospects of replacing a lost loved one, or using a clone to provide a genetic match for organ donation.

Brave New World scenarios even picture cloning super-athletes or super-scientists.

What makes all of these examples ethically skewed is that they represent a sub-Christian view of human nature. A clone is a full human being: Clones are not copies of the people they are cloned from any more than identical twins are copies. They would be genetically identical to the parent, but they would be different people and have minds of their own — just like identical twins are separate individuals, and they have different souls.

But the reason people give for cloning treat the clone as having less than full dignity, as a means to an end, a tool for meeting personal needs or social engineering goals.

Imagine, for example, that an enterprising biomarketing firm decides to clone homerun champ Mark McGwire and supermodel Cindy Crawford. Each of them donates cells and relinquishes parental rights. Imagine what happens when these superbabies are 15 years old. These kids may look just like Mark McGwire and Cindy Crawford at age 15. But problems have arisen. Mark II, sick of living under Mark McGwire’s shadow, despises baseball. He deeply resents being treated like some product. He wants to lead his own life, not fulfill some company’s marketing expectations.

Or the Cindy Crawford clone has problems, too. Let’s imagine that because of the intense pressure put on her to be a supermodel, she turns to God and decides to go into full-time ministry. Everybody deeply resents her decision. After all, the whole point of cloning her was to reproduce a beautiful supermodel who could earn millions of dollars — not a fundamentalist preacher.

These scenarios illustrate one of the horrors of cloning. It’s hard enough for anyone to escape his parents’ expectations, but imagine the unbearable burden of being asked to live the second life of someone who’s gone before — the constant pressure to live up to a preconceived image.

Scripture teaches that God loves us for our own sake. We’re not mere tools or cogs in some scheme of social engineering. We are unique beings, made in His image. We’re not here to fulfill some other person’s plan for our lives, but rather to discover God’s plan.

As the cloning debate heats up, Christians need to explore this subject in depth and help our neighbors understand all that is at stake. This is one debate we should get into now, not after it’s an established fact.

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Egg Money - the Reproductive Revolution

The advertisement featured a stork carrying a baby, and it began turning up a few weeks ago in Ivy League college newspapers. “Egg Donor Needed,” the ad read. Applicants must be at least 5 foot 10, be in good health, and score at least 1400 on their Scholastic Achievement Test.

The payment for a handful of healthy eggs: a whopping $50,000.

Within days of the ad’s appearance, 200 women had responded, some from as far away as Finland and New Zealand.

Among college coeds, the quickest way to pay staggering tuition bills is with “egg money”. But if this trend catches on it could change the very definition of what it means to be human.

Typically, infertility clinics advertise for healthy young women willing to allow the clinic to harvest their eggs. Egg donors take fertility drugs to stimulate their ovaries to produce as many eggs as possible. Using a needle, doctors then aspirate the eggs, which are later implanted in the wombs of anonymous recipients.

Dr. Mark Sauer, director of an assisted reproduction program at Columbia University, says the average donor is a college student who is “clearly doing this because of financial gain.” Women are typically paid about $5,000 for their eggs -- but it is clear today that recipients are getting into the bidding business. Tall, smart Ivy Leaguers are really going to hit the jackpot.

But what are the ethical issues involved in the sale of human eggs?

For example, in some states there is no limit to how many times a woman may donate eggs. But what happens if two people spawned from the same donor should meet and marry? It could be a genetic disaster if they had children.

Federal law prohibits the sale of human eggs. But clinics get around the law by telling women they are paying for their “time and inconvenience,” not for their eggs.

Perhaps worst of all is what egg harvesting teaches women about their own worth. In an article in Jane magazine called “Chicks Selling Their Eggs,” a young woman named Martha said: “It occurred to me that they were going to pay me money for something I wasn’t ever going to use.”

Federal law prohibits the sale of human eggs.

Let’s cut through the fog: What we’re seeing here is the triumph of a completely mechanistic view of human life. The human body is regarded not as a gift from God but as a purely physical object to be taken apart, sold, and used -- just like any other physical object. Human eggs are regarded merely as a commodity -- which is perfectly logical if you have a naturalistic worldview. But think of how it dehumanizes us.

In her book, WITHOUT MORAL LIMITS, Debra Evans writes: “Women are not machines of reproduction, but each are unique, individual persons in body, mind and spirit.”

And of course, that is exactly what the Bible teaches. Genesis says we are made in the image of God -- that we find our ultimate identity and worth in reflecting our Creator. That the human body should not be violated. It is worthy of respect.

You and I have to help our neighbors understand that this mechanistic view traces our identity in the image of the machine. This is nothing but idolatry: people bowing down to the work of their own hands. And like every form of idolatry, it degrades and dehumanizes all who worship at its shrine.

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Babies A La Carte: Good Intentions & the Road To Hell

Job 3:1

Recently, Lisa and Jack Nash announced that their new baby, aptly named Adam, had been conceived solely to be a donor of cells for his older sister. The story of how and why Adam Nash came into the world is the story of how even the best of intentions can result in the worst of evils.

The story begins when the Nash's oldest daughter, Molly, was diagnosed with Fanconi anemia -- a hereditary and always fatal form of the disease. Doctors determined that the best hope for Molly was a cell transplant, from a relative whose cells matched Molly's, but without anemia.

Since they had no other children, the Nashes decided to have one to save Molly. But unlike the California couple who gave birth to a child to provide their daughter with a bone marrow transplant a few years ago, the Nashes weren't taking any chances. Any child conceived naturally would be unlikely to provide Molly with the cells she needed.

So, by in-vitro fertilization, they produced fifteen embryos, which they sent to a genetic testing facility. Only one of the embryos had the right genetic material. It was implanted in Mrs. Nash, who, in August, gave birth to Adam. Two weeks ago, Adam's stem cells were taken from his umbilical cord and implanted in his sister.

Naturally, the Nashes are pleased at the outcome of what they call an "awesome" and "monumental" experience. But thoughtful Christians should respond differently to what has happened here.

Despite all the celebration and the medical justification, the fact remains that Adam was, in the words of columnist Ellen Goodman, "conceived ... not just to be a son, but a medical treatment."

Instead of being an end, with all the God-given dignity that implies, Adam was a means -- valuable only insofar as he carried the right genetic material. And if he hadn't, he would have been rejected -- like the other fourteen discarded embryos.

What's more, the technology and the worldview that made Adam possible can't -- and won't -- be limited to noble purposes like preserving life. We're fast approaching a world where kids will be seen to exist merely to enhance their parents' sense of fulfillment. And even if they aren't conceived as merely a source of spare parts, they will still -- through genetic manipulation -- be made to embody their parents' ideas of an ideal child. Parents creating the personality of their kids fits our narcissistic culture, but it is dehumanizing in the extreme.

Now, nobody should doubt that, as soon as technology permits, parents will be screening embryos for desirable and undesirable genetic traits. In this kind of world, as technology critic Jeremy Rifkin puts it, "children are the ultimate shopping experience."

If our culture is to avoid sliding even further down the slippery slope of manipulating life, Christians will have to be knowledgeable and courageous. We need to be knowledgeable about where these technologies are leading and courageous enough to stand against the accusations that we're hopeless reactionaries.

It's not easy to say "Not so fast!" when the subject is a sick child. But if the "cure" takes humanity to places like this, we've got to say "Stop!" If Christians don't deliver this message, who will?

In the end, loving our neighbor means telling them that the pathway paved with good intentions also leads to hell.

For further reading:

Goodman, Ellen. "A Blessed Event -- At What Price?" The Boston Globe, 8 October 2000.

Rifkin, Jeremy. "On The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World." Mars Hill Audio Journal 34 (September/October 1998).

Weiss, Rick. "Test-tube Baby Born to Save Ill Sister." The Washington Post, 3 October 2000.

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An Obvious Moral Absurdity: A Secular Case Against Cloning

On February 27, 2003, Congress voted on the Human Cloning Prohibition Act (H.R. 534), that was intended to ban all human cloning.

The bill's opponents support an alternative bill that bans what they call “reproductive cloning” while permitting so-called “therapeutic cloning.” A symbol and advocate for this bill is actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed when thrown from his horse in 1995.

Given Reeve's personal history, it seems almost callous to argue against his position. Fortunately, there is someone whose own story is a mirror image of Reeve's, respected columnist Charles Krauthammer. And he says that Reeve is dead wrong.

In the NEW REPUBLIC, Krauthammer, who was paralyzed in a diving accident, makes what he calls a “secular argument” against all human cloning. He reminds readers that all cloning involves the same technology: The genetic material is removed from a human egg and is replaced by the genetic material from another person.

The difference lies in what happens afterward. In “reproductive cloning,” which both bills would ban, the egg is implanted in a uterus. In what Reeve and company call “therapeutic cloning,” “the main objective ... [is] to disassemble [the four- to seven-day-old divided cell, called a 'blastocyst'] ... [and] pull the stem cells out.”

Words like 'disassemble' and 'pull' remind us of a fact that cloning proponents would like us to forget: The clone is invariably killed. There is nothing “therapeutic” about it, certainly not for the dead clone.

For Christians, the clone's inevitable destruction renders cloning beyond the pale. But Krauthammer insists that you don't have to believe that “personhood begins at conception” or that “the embryo is entitled to inviolability” to be opposed to all human cloning. For starters, permitting the cloning of embryos for research makes it inevitable “that someone will implant one in a woman and produce a human clone.” What do we do then? The bill supported by Reeve would “make it a crime not to destroy that fetus.” Krauthammer, who is pro-choice, calls this “an obvious moral absurdity.”

But even if this were not the case, what is being done to the cloned embryo should give us pause. Even if you deny that the seven-day-old human embryo is a full member of the human family, there is still something human there. As Krauthammer puts it, “It is not nothing.” And if it is not a person, is it like what we once believed was property -- that is, slaves? You can't say that. Proceeding with cloning, Krauthammer writes, will mean crossing a “moral frontier.” Allowing the creation of human embryos in order to use them and then destroy them will “enable further assaults on human dignity,” Krauthammer explains. And he warns: “Violate the blastocyst today, ... and the practice will inure you to violating the fetus or even the infant tomorrow.”

Christians need to learn how to make this kind of logical “secular argument.” Ultimately, the cloning debate isn't about callousness versus compassion. It's about whether there are any limits in our pursuit of what people call “compassionate” -- a pursuit that threatens, not just cloned embryos now, but in time, the weak and disabled and then all of us.

The Culture of Death: Nazi Comparisons Are Valid

In a 1995 encyclical entitled "The Gospel of Life," Pope John Paul II coined the phrase "the culture of death." By this, he was referring to the combination of laws and political and cultural institutions that systematically undermine the value of human life in Western nations.

One of the most important forces working in the culture of death is the field known as "bioethics" -- that is, the ethical standards being embraced to deal with medical and biological questions.

In his new book, appropriately entitled THE CULTURE OF DEATH, J. Wesley Smith chronicles what he calls "the assault on medical ethics in America." Smith analyzes the practices and philosophies that have taken the medical profession away from the moral certainty provided by the maxim of the Hippocratic Oath, "First, do no harm."

As Smith tells readers, the bioethics establishment "[rejects] what until now has been the core value of Western civilization: that all human beings possess equal moral worth."

As a result of this rejection, bioethicists increasingly embrace the idea that there are lives that are not worth living -- that the right to life is contingent on an arbitrary idea known as "quality of life."

This idea leads to the conclusion that some patients, especially the elderly, have an affirmative duty to die, so as not to waste scarce resources. Unbelievable.

Well, this is more than theory. As Smith points out, the fruits of this worldview are visible in the increased talk about "patient autonomy," a term used to justify abandoning patients to hasten their deaths. We see it in the increasingly routine withdrawal of feeding tubes from disabled or terminal patients.

If talk of "lives not worth living" reminds you of the Third Reich, you're not alone. Columnist Nat Hentoff makes the same connection in a recent column. He reminds readers that it was the Nazis who coined the expression "lives not worth living," to describe the incurably ill and disabled. They called them "useless eaters" -- a phrase that anticipates the removal of feeding tubes.

Unfortunately, Smith doesn't make the connection between abortion and the "assault on medical ethics" he describes. It's unfortunate because it was legalized abortion, more than anything else, that taught Americans that human beings -- especially at the beginning and end of life -- don't all possess equal moral worth. It was abortion that introduced Americans to the concept of disposable human life.

Still Smith's book provides an invaluable service to the cause of life. It's both a warning as to how much our culture has embraced the culture of death, and it's a resource for helping us to spread the word about the deadly consequences of this fatal embrace.

Even if our neighbors roll their eyes at the mention of the words "pro life," they've still got a stake in this debate. As Smith concludes:

"We all age. We fall ill. We grow weak. We become disabled. A day comes when our need to receive from our fellows adds to far more than our ability to give in return. When we reach that stage of life ... will we still be deemed persons entitled to equal protection under the law?"

And all that stands between us and that bleak prospect is the Gospel of Life.

For further reference:

Hentoff, Nat. "Licensed to Kill; A New Awareness of our Culture of Death." Washington Times, 26 February 2001.

Smith, J. Wesley. The Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001.

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The Abolition of Man: the Real Risks of Human Cloning

As hard as it is to believe, it was almost one hundred years ago that H. G. Wells horrified readers with his tale of trans-genetic mutation, The Island of Doctor Moreau. Many of us would still like to believe that human cloning and mutation won't soon leap from the paperback world of science fiction to the world we live in.

Well, I'm sorry to report that not only has cloning left the printed page, it's potentially even more devastating than we feared. Research into human cloning is going on right now, all for the ostensible good of humanity. Unfortunately, it may well result in what C. S. Lewis called the "abolition" of man.

In the four years since scientists cloned the Scottish sheep Dolly, cows, pigs, mice, monkeys, and other animals have been cloned. What's more, recent reports indicate that human cloning experiments have been going on in Australia for the past two years. Melbourne-based company Stemcell Sciences has formed cloned human embryos by implanting human DNA into pigs eggs.

Is this kind of experimentation legal? you might ask. Well, yes and no. The Australian government outlawed the practice of putting human cells into animal eggs. But through legal contortions, the scientists managed to skirt the regulations. They blended some residual pig DNA into the otherwise human embryo.

That's right -- because the scientists did not merely clone a human being but rather created a transgenetic monster, they managed to avoid legal sanction. And, in order to escape confronting what was created, the embryos were allowed to live for only thirty-two days.

How in the world can anyone justify this sort of experimentation? The most prevalent justification is therapeutic. Cloned human beings hold out the promise of an inexhaustible supply of organs and tissue for replacement donation and cure of disease. Of course, this begs the question of the morality of creating a human being in order to kill it for his body parts. Many scientists admit they are troubled by the implications -- but not troubled enough to abandon the research.

The other justification is reproduction. Three doctors from the United States, Italy, and Israel recently called a press conference in Rome to announce their intentions to create cloned children within the next two years. The scientists adamantly rejected ethical or scientific oversight of any kind. They made it quite clear that nothing would stop their humanitarian mission to bring hope to the childless through cloning.

They apparently don't see the irony of calling this inhuman practice "humanitarian."

Despite scientists' claims of inevitability, some nations have not sat idly by. Earlier this month, the first binding international agreement banning cloning was passed by the legislatures of five European nations -- including Germany, which knows all too well the horrors of this kind of medical experimentation. Even Canada is considering legislation to ban cloning and limit embryonic research. And next week, hearings into embryonic research will be held here in Washington -- a matter for concern and prayer by Christians.

At issue, you see, is the very future of the human race. For we may all see only too well what C. S. Lewis meant when he observed that man's conquest of nature would result in the abolition of man.

For further reference:

"Canada May Ban Human Cloning." Reuters Health News, 14 March 2001.

"Secret Testing of Human Cloning Revealed in Australia." Australia Daily Telegraph, 12 March 2001.

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The Threat of Embryonic Research

Not long ago, I listened to perhaps the most powerful and eloquent speech I have ever heard. It was delivered by Joni Eareckson Tada at a Prison Fellowship banquet. Many of you, of course, know Joni's story: As a teenager, she dove into shallow water and broke her neck. For thirty-five years, she has lived in a wheelchair, a quadriplegic.

It was this fact that gave her speech such power. You see, the subject of her speech was embryonic stem cell research, which has been dangled out as a “miracle cure” for dozens of different medical conditions -- including spinal cord injuries. Indeed, one the most aggressive proponents of this research is another quadriplegic: actor Christopher Reeve. Both Reeve and Joni know what happens during embryonic stem cell research: The embryo -- a tiny human being -- is killed as stem cells are plundered for use by the already born.

Reeve is willing to overlook this inconvenient fact; Joni is not. Unlike Reeve, she understands where such research will lead.

Consider what Joni said: “The weak, the frail, quadriplegics, the infirm, the handicapped, the elderly have never fared well in cultures which view life as a commodity.” Look what happened just more than fifty years ago in Germany, she said, when doctors first cast a cold eye on people whose lives they considered not worth living. “The first to be carted off down the long, dark, midnight hallways of institutions were the defective, or the handicapped, or the mentally disabled.” Specifically, they were “disabled people,” Joni said, “who had no visitors, no friends, no one to speak up for them.”

“And now we have the philosophers of this age,” she said, “people like Peter Singer insisting that folks like those with mental handicaps have no rights.”

And she added: Our dream of solving all medical problems is turning into a nightmare. “Our society doesn't seem to have a place for those who suffer. We want to avoid [suffering,] ignore it, eradicate it, medicate it. We have such contempt for suffering, and it's only a short philosophical hop, skip, and jump to where you begin to have contempt for suffering people. People who strain Medicare, people who drain the grandkids' college funds, people who contribute nothing more than bills to society.”

But, as Joni pointed out, it is not just the disabled who are at risk. “The lives of all of us are jeopardized when life can be bought and sold, copied and replicated, altered and aborted and euthanized,” she warned. We are all vulnerable “in a society that thinks nothing of creating a class of human beings for the purpose of lethal experimentation and exploitation.” Those are powerful words, given with such conviction.

Of course, we all want cures for disease and disability, as Joni said, but not at the price of human dignity. She knows, as Reeve does not, what a bad bargain it is. The promise of a cure is seductive, but it becomes a death warrant.

Unlike Christopher Reeve, Joni knows that there are worse things in life than being handicapped. There is the destruction of human dignity through cloning. And there is the creation of a cultural climate where first the weak, the small, the sick, and the suffering, and then all of us are carted down the “long, dark, midnight hallways.”

Controllers and Conditioners: the Abolition of Man

Congress is coming back to Washington this week, and high on their agenda is the battle over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle has vowed to scuttle the President's limited approach and wants unlimited funding. Republicans, meanwhile, are digging in their heels.

Well, if they're smart, they'll heed the warning of the pipe-smoking Oxford don who saw it all more than fifty years ago, and warned what was ahead if genetic manipulation was ever allowed.

C. S. Lewis wrote, prophetically, "If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendents what it pleases, all men who live after are the patients of that power," slaves to the "dead hand of the great planners and conditioners."

Just as Lewis saw, the biotech revolution is moving like a steamroller, crushing everything in its path - - including ethical questions. We glibly toss about the term bioethics, but, sadly, the "bio" -- the technology -- has overpowered the "ethics."

The reason is that secular ethics have been drained of moral content. In the political debate, the utilitarians - that is, the greatest good for the greatest number -- have seized the high ground, offering dazzling predictions of cures for deadly diseases.

You'll hear congressmen in coming days talk about unused embryos that will be destroyed anyway -- so using them to help the desperately sick is the "pro-life" position. Not so. And Christians have to be prepared to challenge the case.

For example, predictions of what embryo stem-cell research may accomplish have been grossly overstated. Experiments to date have led to some grotesque results. Proponents claim that only embryonic stem cells can meet their research needs; yet, promising results have been achieved from placental and adult stem cells -- the use of which presents no ethical dilemmas.

And what about those "leftover" embryos which are just going to be destroyed? Couples who have adopted and given birth to them ought to show off their beautiful "post-embryos" -- now healthy children.

Missing in the discussion so far is the fact that the scientists involved in embryonic stem cell research are poised to make huge profits from these deadly studies. But as Christians, it's our duty to raise even bigger moral questions. The worst atrocities are performed in the name of humanitarian causes. And sacrificing one to benefit all soon makes all vulnerable.

Christians must also raise Lewis's question, in "The Abolition of Man": What does it really mean if we set ourselves up as the master of the future destiny of the human race?

His answer is chilling: If man with his technology makes the ultimate conquest over nature, he will soon find that nature has conquered him. "If man chooses to treat himself as raw material," Lewis wrote, "raw material he will be," manipulated by dehumanized conditioners.

In our lifetimes, democracy has triumphed over tyranny. But what an irony it would be if, by exchanging moral truth for the cold calculus of utilitarianism, our generation should usher in a new and even more terrifying form of tyranny.

God forbid!

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Biological Machines: Cloning and Patent Law

Ten years ago, Stuart Newman and Jeremy Rifkin invented a monster they called the "humouse." Using already existing techniques, Newman designed a mixture of human and mouse, a chimera that could be used by drug companies to test new drugs.

Newman and Rifkin then applied for a patent. Mind you, they have no intention of ever making their monster. Instead they were making a point, one that is almost as scary as their creature: God may be the author of life, but it's possible for man to hold the patent.

As Newman told the LOS ANGELES TIMES, their actions were prompted by the horror of "genetically engineered human beings made for sale." When it comes to patent law, Newman says, "there really is no boundary on what you can do with human life." So he filed for the patent in order to force people to face the moral issue and force the government to establish a moral boundary.

And that boundary can't come too soon. According to Page Cunningham of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, we are on the way to patenting human beings.

A patent issued to the University of Missouri for a process connected with animal cloning was "written so broadly that it appears to include human cloning and products of cloning in its protection." These "products" can include "embryos," "fetuses," and even "children" resulting from the patented process.

Thus, 137 years after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the state university of a former slave-holding state could find itself in the business of owning people.

How is this possible? Until 1980, the Patent and Trademark Office would not issue a patent for a living creature. Then, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 margin, ruled that patents could be issued for genetically engineered bacterium. According to the Court, the law authorizes patents for "anything under the sun that is made by man."

This led to patents being granted for genetically engineered animals like mice and cattle. Still, patenting a person seemed out of the question because of the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against slavery. But in recent years, the Patent Office has issued patents for human genes and human cells, including human stem cells.

Given the state of patent law, patenting a human embryo is only the next logical step -- a step made easier by our cultural and legal refusal to recognize the full humanity of the embryo.

Even if we somehow stop short of that, we'll have witnessed further erosion of respect for human life, for, as Andrew Kimbrell of the International Center for Technology Assessment puts it, human life is now defined as a "biological machine that can be cloned, manufactured, and patented ... "

Fortunately, there is still time to act. The European Patent Office recently admitted that it had made a "serious mistake" in granting a patent that would have allowed the cloning of human embryos. It scaled back the patent to bring it into line with European law outlawing human cloning.

Our Patent and Trademark Office can reverse itself as well, especially if Congress makes it clear that there are boundaries to what you can patent. Christians need to make sure they do. Or else the monsters of some people's imaginations will become a grim reality, complete with a "for sale" sign.

How Much Is Too Much?

John 15:13

Having already given one kidney to a total stranger, Zell Kravinsky was sipping an orange-mango Snapple and, unprompted, making a case for giving away his other one.

“What if someone needed it who could produce more good than me?” Mr. Kravinsky said today in an interview. “What if I was a perfect match for a dying scientist who was the intellectual driving force behind a breakthrough cure for cancer or AIDS or on the brink of unlocking the secrets of cell regeneration?”

The consequences of Mr. Kravinsky giving away his other kidney are apparent — he would die. The ethical questions such a gift would raise for transplant surgeons would also make it highly unlikely.

But Mr. Kravinsky sees the choice as a fairly clear one. “I'd be a schnook not to give it to him,” he said. “He could save millions of lives, and I can't.”

Talking to Mr. Kravinsky, 48, is unsettling. His brand of altruism borders on obsession, perhaps even a sort of benign madness, although he was subjected to a battery of psychiatric tests before the hospital would accept him as a kidney donor.

“I think it makes people feel guilty,” said Barry Katz, a longtime friend of Mr. Kravinsky's. “I don't think I'm a bad person. I give money to charity, and I think I'm fairly generous, but on the other hand, when I look at what he's done, I can't help but notice a little voice in the back of my head saying, what have you done lately, why haven't you saved someone's life?”

Mr. Kravinsky's latest charitable gesture, donating his kidney to a stranger, is still relatively rare, with 134 such donations in the United States since 1998, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, and it stirred controversy among his friends and relatives.

His wife, Emily, a psychiatrist, has threatened to divorce him, Mr. Kravinsky said, worried that his altruism is coming at the expense of their four children. The Kravinskys have given away $15 million, with Mr. Kravinsky promising to give away virtually everything the family has.

Mr. Kravinsky lost two friends over the kidney donation, and even his parents are struggling to repress their anger.

“You can give money, you can give service, said Reeda Kravinsky, his mother, 77. “Body parts are quite another thing.

“You give them to family members, and even that's a great sacrifice, but it's understandable. But in Zell's circumstance, I don't understand it and I don't agree with it.”

Mr. Kravinsky says he is only applying the principle of “maximum human utility,” explaining, “My life is not worth more than anyone else's.”

Mr. Kravinsky said the only argument against altruistic kidney donation — those given to strangers — that has any validity for him is the one pressed by his wife and parents, who asked what he would do if one of his children needed a kidney and he had none to give.

But, he said, he considered the probability of that happening, the probability of him being alive and having a healthy enough kidney, the probability that a sibling would not be a better donor, the probability that organ donation will still be a necessity.

“I thought about all that and decided that the probabilities simply didn't outweigh the life of my recipient,” he said. “I love my children, I really do. But I just can't say their lives are more valuable than any other life.”

He is not sure how much his children know about his kidney donation. He said his wife had tried to keep the news about it from them.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Kravinsky declined to discuss the impact of her husband's kidney donation on their marriage and family. She said she had responded to a reporter's call because Mr. Kravinsky's actions would increase altruistic kidney donations and she wanted others like him to fully understand the system.

Dr. Kravinsky cited a study in the latest New England Journal of Medicine, for instance, that found fewer than one-half of the people who could donate their organs did so when they died.

“The system is not well run,” she said, “and although I'm not opposed to altruistic donations across the board, you have to wonder why it is, if we're not getting the donations we could from cadavers, we are looking at living donors.”

Dr. Kravinsky also said transplant programs working with altruistic donors needed to include their families more.

Mr. Kravinsky said he had put aside money for his children's college education, but the Kravinskys live very modestly in a slightly dilapidated-looking house they bought for $141,600 in 1996 in Jenkintown, a Philadelphia suburb. He said they lived on $50,000 generated by rental income on property he owns.

He made his fortune in property, buying up housing units around the University of Pennsylvania campus when he was a lecturer teaching Renaissance literature and then moving into commercial real estate.

His $15 million in donations in cash and property included a $6.2 million gift to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as gifts to a school for disturbed children and to the Ohio State University School of Public Health.

[On Friday the Ohio State University School of Public Health announced an additional $30 million gift from the Kravinskys.]

“He didn't have to do any more,” said Irving Kravinsky, his 88-year-old father.

His parents knew he was considering donating a kidney. They had expressed their objections, heatedly, and thought he had dropped the notion — until their phone rang early on the morning of July 22.

It was Emily Kravinsky, wondering if her husband was there.

In fact, Mr. Kravinsky was in the hospital, donating his kidney to Donnell Reid, a young woman whom he had never met.

“We were shocked,” Irving Kravinsky said. “We thought we still had time to discuss it.”

Somewhat sheepishly, Mr. Kravinsky said: “I snuck out. I was afraid they would do something to stop me, threaten the hospital with a lawsuit or something.”

His mother said she believed the hospital that handled the transplant, the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, used her son.

“They wanted a poster boy, and they exploited him terribly,” she said. “But he doesn't see it.”

Dr. Radi Zaki, the surgeon who performed the transplant, said he had tried to talk Mr. Kravinsky out of the donation many times.

“We did not seek him out or look for him in any way,” Dr. Zaki said. “He came to us and was very persistent.”

Mr. Kravinsky concedes that the attention his act has attracted is gratifying.

“I didn't expect to get publicity, but I won't deny that it feeds my vanity,” he said.

But Mr. Kravinsky said his main goal was to increase kidney donations, particularly among African-Americans, where there are cultural barriers to organ donation. He is white and the recipient of his kidney is African-American.

He said he was even considering breaking federal law and offering to pay someone to give their kidney away to a stranger.

“No one should have a vacation home until everyone has a place to live,” he said. “No one should have a second car until everyone has one. And no one should have two kidneys until everyone has one.”

Because We Can: Taking Too Much Control Over Children

When we hear people talk about gender selection, we usually think of the abortion or the abandonment of baby girls in places like China, as a result of repressive government policies. But our thinking may have to change. If recent media reports are correct, gender selection could become a hot trend here in America.

According to the January 26 issue of NEWSWEEK, technology is making it possible for couples to choose whether they have a boy or a girl. Hundreds of American couples have already tried what some are calling “family balancing,” and hundreds more hope to try it soon. Reporter Claudia Kalb writes, “Despite considerable moral murkiness, Americans are talking to their doctors and visiting catchy websites [about gender selection].”

“Moral murkiness” indeed. Currently, the most successful method of gender selection is pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD. The technique was created to screen embryos for diseases. Now it's being used to screen them for gender as well. Doctors create multiple embryos, select a few of the desired gender, and implant them. The rest are frozen, donated, or discarded.

It's easy to see why PGD is the most controversial method of gender selection. But it's not just the method that is disturbing; it's the whole idea. For example, a company called MicroSort screens sperm cells for X and Y chromosomes before the embryos are created. Some people think this does away with the ethical dilemma of disposing of unused embryos. But MicroSort reports that four of its clients had abortions after they found out that their child was the wrong gender after all. That's what we should expect when we start paying to create children to our specifications.

How have we come to the point of destroying an unborn child simply because he or she isn't the right gender? Perhaps NEWSWEEK puts it best: “Throughout history, humans have wished for a child of one sex or the other and have been willing to do just about anything to get it. Now that gender selection is scientifically feasible, interest ... is exploding.”

It's not that the technology is evil in itself. Technology simply enables humans to do what they have always wanted to do. But it comes along at a time when our moral foundations have eroded so far that we can justify just about anything we want. And science without moral restraints is dangerous.

But there are two things in the article that give me hope. First, it points out that gender selection is already banned in much of Europe, and there's a chance that a similar law could be passed here that we would need to support.

Second, NEWSWEEK tells the story of one woman who nearly chose gender selection but backed out at the last minute. Note what she told Claudia Kalb: “I don't think God intended us to do that. We decided we should just pray about it and leave it up to God.” Amen.

It's good to know that attitude is still alive and well in our country. Let's hope that more and more people come to realize that just because we CAN control a child's gender, that doesn't mean we SHOULD.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Claudia Kalb, “Brave new babies,” Newsweek, 26 January 2004. In the same issue, see also the related articles “No Girls, Please“ and “One, Two, Three or More?“

• Visit the Council for Biotechnology Policy's website to learn more about the latest developments in biotechnology and bioethics.

• S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943).

• President's Council on Bioethics, “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Washington, D.C., October 2003.

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Building Better Babies: Engineering Our Children and Losing Humanity

A recent issue of the WEEKLY STANDARD featured an article with the ominous title “Building a Better Baby.” The article reports that a new screening process, called FASTER, will allow doctors to test an unborn child for Down syndrome as early as ten to thirteen weeks. This would mean that the child's mother “could terminate her pregnancy before it showed,” so the article says — easier and more convenient for everyone.

At the same time, some doctors are saying that all pregnant women, not just those whose children are at risk of having birth defects, should routinely be offered potentially dangerous tests like amniocentesis. As the STANDARD points out, a recent British survey indicates that women are so worried about the possibility of having a genetically abnormal child that they're willing to risk the miscarriage that amniocentesis can cause. This tallies with the statistic that “about 90 percent of women who discover their baby has a chromosomal disorder abort it.” Ninety percent! If that figure isn't shocking, I don't know what is.

Clearly, there's been a major shift in the way our society thinks about the disabled — something to which I, as a grandfather of an autistic child, am acutely sensitive. Not that the doctors advocating the testing or the women choosing the abortions would put it that way — after all, it's not politically correct to discriminate against the disabled, not after they're born anyway. But they would probably say that, in these cases, they were doing the merciful thing by ending a life of suffering before it really began. By using such euphemisms, our culture has bought into the bizarre but seductive idea that the best way to eliminate certain kinds of illnesses is simply to eliminate the people who suffer from those illnesses.

We may reach a point, as the author argues, when all mothers of children with genetic abnormalities will be EXPECTED to abort them. Already some mothers are feeling the burden of this expectation. Some time ago, I reported on the case of a man whose wife reluctantly aborted after finding out something was wrong with their child — and after intense pressure from her doctors. When the woman got pregnant again, she didn't want her child tested at all, but she finally gave in “to doctors, friends, and a husband who couldn't bear not knowing.” But even the husband had to admit, “It seems to me a plausible fear that eventually these decisions will slip more and more from our hands ... “ We already know that many do, because insurance companies often refuse to cover a costly childhood disability that has been detected in utero. Each abortion of a disabled child, besides being a tragedy in itself, brings us one step closer to just this sort of financially coerced eugenics.

It's one thing to want a healthy child. But it's another thing to refuse to let an unhealthy child to see the light of day. When we manipulate life in this way and diminish the humanity of the unborn, we become less human ourselves because we end up viewing life — all life, ours included — as a commodity that can be rejected by quality control.

Christians need to take the lead in educating people that children are gifts, as my autistic grandson most surely is. By going down the path we're currently on, we might one day get rid of genetic diseases, but only at the cost of our own humanity.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Agnes R. Howard, “Building a Better Baby,” Weekly Standard, 5 April 2004. (Subscription required, or call 1-877-322-5527 for a copy.)

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030528, “Something to Celebrate: Faith That Goes beyond Happy Endings.”

• Bill Keller, “Charlie's Ghost,” New York Times, 29 June 2002. Reprinted by Michigan State University.

• William Saletan, “Face the Fetus,” Slate.com, 29 March 2004.

• S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).

• Sign up for the free “Biotech Policy Update” e-newsletter.

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Physician, Heal Thyself: Peter Singer On Bush's Ethics

Peter Singer holds himself out as an ethicist, but he doesn't teach the kind of ethics I recognize.

I realize that's a pretty strong statement. But Singer keeps proving the truth of that every time he opens his mouth. He is, you may recall, the Princeton ethics professor who has a good word to say for everything from euthanasia to infanticide to bestiality. Like a little boy pulling down his pants to shock the grownups, Singer heads straight for the most controversial issues and thinks up the most outrageous things he can possibly say about them.

So perhaps it's no surprise that in this election year, Singer's latest bid for attention comes in the form of a book titled The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush. His argument, as you might guess, is that George W. Bush doesn't have any ethics — or, at best, that he doesn't stick to the ethics he does have.

Singer's method of demonstrating this point is to examine Bush's words and actions in a number of different areas, like embryonic stem cell research and the war on terrorism. Then he evaluates those words and actions in light of several different belief systems.

From this exercise, Singer concludes that Bush is neither a libertarian nor a utilitarian. Well, I could have told him that and saved him a lot of research. But he also concludes that Bush's actions are not consistently based on a Christian ethic. That assertion deserves serious consideration, because Bush himself claims to take his Christian faith very seriously and to base his ideas and actions on Christian principles. If Singer is right on this point, the president is as big a hypocrite as Singer believes him to be.

But the problem is that when you do try to look at Singer's assertion seriously, it falls apart. That's because Singer doesn't show even the most basic understanding of the Christian ethic, and he makes no attempt to try to understand it. Instead, we get a statement like this: “Christians hold a wide range of ethical views. Christian ethics has been in the teachings of different Christians, neo-Platonic, Aristotelian, Kantian, Marxist, and existentialist ... Protestant Christians often look to the Bible, but cannot agree on how to interpret it, nor what priority to give its varying suggestions.” Because some Christians have been known to disagree on certain issues — for instance, embryonic research and abortion — Singer, therefore, declares that Bush's positions on these issues are “not inescapably implied by his Christian belief.”

That is as far as Singer ever gets in describing what a distinctively Christian ethic looks like. This from a man who is a distinguished philosopher and professor of ethics? The man New Yorker magazine called the greatest philosopher alive? He provides a clear working definition of utilitarianism and libertarianism with no trouble at all, but Christianity seems to throw him for a loop.

Judging by this vague and garbled account, I'd say the professor just hasn't done his homework. This is surprising since Singer, though starting from false premises, is relentlessly logical. And when you consider that he's writing a book about the ethics of George W. Bush and that Bush cites Christianity as the main influence in his life, Singer's lack of effort to understand Christianity seems rather, well, unethical by any standard.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Douglas Kern, “Beyond Peter Singer,” Tech Central Station, 19 April 2004.

• Michael Lind, review of The President of Good and Evil, New Statesman, 2004. Though Lind is no Bush fan either, he is highly critical of Singer's book.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030409, “Questions of Life and Death: The Activist and the Professor.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 010412, “Beyond the Pale: Peter Singer's Latest Outrage.” (Archived commentary; free registration required.)

• Armand Nicholi, The Question of God (Free Press, 2002).

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Hype vs. Reality: Biotechnology and the Future

Recently, I was on Capitol Hill with my colleague, bioethics expert Dr. Nigel Cameron, launching our new book HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE BIOTECH CENTURY in which we bring together key experts to help the Church understand the incredible implications of the biotech revolution.

While there, I met a remarkable young woman named Rebecca Griffin. Rebecca is a living example of biotechnology, since she was conceived through in vitro fertilization. As she says, “I was one of those 'test tube babies' [an embryo] that could just as easily have been sacrificed because I wasn't quite human enough to matter.” But she has even more to say about the biotech agenda.

Rebecca was well-acquainted with Alzheimer's disease long before President Reagan's illness raised public awareness, and celebrities started exploiting it to support the kind of unethical, destructive embryonic research that President Reagan opposed. Rebecca lived through it.

When she was only 9 years old, her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and she spent the next seven years helping her mother care for him. They cared for him at home, because they couldn't afford a nursing home until the beginning of her senior year of high school.

So the events around President Reagan's death struck a very personal note. “As a caregiver who has lived through the situation myself,” writes Rebecca, “I say this to other sufferers: Don't listen to them. Don't buy into this hoax.” She continues: “Those who push for a lifting of the ban on government funding to kill more embryos for research dangle hope in front of desperate, hurting people in their hunt for public support. It is exploitation at its most debased and repugnant form.

“Sometimes things do happen to us, things that we can't control,” she adds, “but don't let anyone use your grief to push their agenda through.”

Rebecca makes the case eloquently. The advocates of this unethical research are preying on those whose love for their sick relatives or fear of disease themselves makes them vulnerable. At the same time, they conveniently ignore the medical testimony that embryonic stem-cell research offers no hope for Alzheimer's. And they ignore the fact that adult stem cells are working.

Last year, together with Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kans.), Dr. James Dobson, Joni Eareckson Tada, and other distinguished leaders, Dr. Cameron and I launched the “Manifesto on The Sanctity of Life in the Brave New World.” The Manifesto calls for a comprehensive ban on cloning, on genetically engineering inheritable changes, and on genetic discrimination. It also calls for a wide-ranging review of the patent law to prevent the commercial exploitation of human tissue. In our book HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE BIOTECH CENTURY, we restate the Manifesto and set out the agenda in much more detail.

Now, I'll admit that this is a very complicated issue. But Christians need to pay attention and to understand it, so that we can answer those who would exploit our sick relatives and friends. Maybe we are not all as eloquent as Rebecca Griffin, but we all have a responsibility to know the facts and speak out. What is at stake is what it means to be human.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Charles Colson and Nigel Cameron, Human Dignity in the Biotech Century: A Christian Vision for Public Policy (InterVarsity, 2004).

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040616, “The Wrong Legacy: A Cause Reagan Wouldn't Have Supported.”

• Nigel M. de S. Cameron, “Hijacking the Reagan Name,” Bioethics and Culture Network Newsletter, 13 August 2004.

• Paige Comstock Cunningham, J.D., “Common Sense on ESCR: Don't Wait Around for the Miracle Cure,” Council for Biotechnology Policy, 17 October 2003.

• Steven Ertelt, “President Bush to United Nations: Ban All Forms of Human Cloning,” Lifenews.com,21 September 2004.

• Visit the Council for Biotechnology Policy website: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=5218&et=H&s=40730

• Visit the Center for Bioethics and Culture website: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=5209&et=H&s=40730

• Pastors and church leaders: Call us at 1-877-322-5527 to request the booklet “The Struggle for the Human Race: Cloning and the Biotech Challenge — A Pastoral Response.” See also this sample sermon on biotechnology.

• The Wilberforce Forum's “Playing God?“ curriculum, from Group Publishing, is designed for churches and small-group studies to address a myriad of bioethics issues, such as stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, cloning, and abortion.

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Most Christians Are Ill Prepared For End-of-life Care Decisions

Amos 4:12

Lou Byrd knows she could be in the final months of her life and is at peace with that.

“There are worse things than death,” said Byrd, a member of Cynthiana (Kentucky) Baptist Church.

The 73-year-old has both emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “There's no cure for it,” she said matter-of-factly. “I'm not going to hold back when [God] calls.”

“Holding back” to Byrd means relying on artificial respiration, nutrition or hydration to maintain her body's functions when she reaches her final hours. She has signed an advance directive stating her wishes. Byrd said she also plans to sign a separate document informing emergency medical personnel that she does not want CPR or other resuscitation treatment if her cardiac and respiratory functions stop.

But Byrd is in the minority, according to a national survey. The legal website FindLaw.com reports that only 36 percent of Americans have formalized plans for end-of-life care through an advance directive.

More than 30 years after the first living will legislation was introduced in the United States, Americans seem either confused about end-of-life decisions or, according to some observers, reluctant to formalize their wishes.

Meanwhile, doctors, judges, theologians and just about everyone else continue to debate which types of medical care prolong life and which ones prolong death. Theologians and hospice providers say these issues are particularly thorny for Christians, many of whom wonder if they are meant to decide this issue in the first place.

People “want to know, 'Have I crossed a line here?'“ said John Rudd, chaplain supervisor for Hospice of the Bluegrass in Lexington, Ky., who has counseled hundreds of patients and families about end-of-life decisions. “A chaplain's job is to help patients and families find their way through those issues without playing God,” he said.

Margie Montgomery, executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, said many people believe they already have informed loved ones about their end-of-life care wishes through informal talks. “Most of us feel we have someone in the family who feels like we do,” she said. “But there are terrible arguments that can ensue in hospital corridors.”

Florida judges ruled recently on one of the most high-profile end-of-life disputes in recent years. The Florida Supreme Court ruled 7-0 against “Terri's Law,” a 2003 act that allowed Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to order a feeding tube be reinserted into a 40-year-old disabled woman.

Such matters were practically unheard of 40 years ago according, to George Webb, a retired anesthesiologist and medical director of the Hospice Institute in Louisville, Ky.

A 1962 medical school graduate, Webb marvels at the advances in medicine he has witnessed during his career. “Transplants were just being thought of,” he said. “Heart-assist devices and ventilators were in the early stages.”

Medical progress has blurred the lines between life and death, creating the need for the formalization of end-of-life wishes through an advance directive.

An advance directive is any written document that gives explicit instructions regarding health-care treatments during a serious or life-threatening illness or injury. A living will is the most common type of advance directive.

Louisville attorney Jay Turner helps people who want advice on estate planning. He said only about 20 percent of the plans he has facilitated have included advance directives.

“Everybody knows who they want to have their stuff,” Turner said. “But a lot of Christians are even loath to approach the subject of end-of-life issues.”

The hesitancy is more than just a reluctance to talk about death, according to Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics. “The Christian community has the strong tendency toward avoiding decisions out of fear of making an imperfect decision,” he said.

Parham called advanced directives an exercise in Christian stewardship and unselfishness. They spare family members from making agonizing choices for a loved one, he said. “As responsible moral agents, we need to be more accountable for our own decision-making.”

As a Baptist layman, Turner agrees. “I consider that trying to offer a solution before the problem presents itself to be taking care of the temple,” the lawyer said.

Most observers agree that end-of-life decisions should be made, but the choices themselves are less clear. Court rulings since the mid-1970s granting the discontinuation of artificial respiration, nutrition and hydration have contributed to a critical shift in perception, Montgomery said.

Judges, juries and family members once assumed most people would prefer to live, even in a chronically debilitated condition, Montgomery said. Now there is “a presumption of death,” she said, where friends, family and courts assume a person would rather die.

This shift led the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes right-to-die measures, to establish the “will to live” project to assist people in forming end-of-life plans that go beyond most living wills. The “will to live,” like any advance directive, is a binding, legal document.

“Decisions coming down from the courts indicate a need for people to have these protections in place,” Montgomery said, pointing to a recent ruling by the Kentucky Supreme Court as an example.

In August, the high court upheld a 1994 law that permits guardians or relatives to discontinue life support -- including artificial nutrition and hydration -- for an unconscious person who does not have an advance directive.

“It sets a dangerous precedent,” Montgomery said, noting that the decision would permit “removing food and water from a person not in the last stages of a terminal illness.”

Montgomery said the language in most living wills is too broad. “You can't paint it all with a wide brush as some documents indicate,” she said. “We should determine what is in the best interest of each individual patient.”

According to the National Right to Life Committee, the “will to live” records a patient's desire to receive treatment that would preserve life, even if that treatment might not cure or improve his condition.

Artificial nutrition and hydration would be considered basic treatment and not medical care under a “will to live.” The document can also outline special conditions for the discontinuation of certain medial care and treatment if a patient is suffering from a terminal illness or death is imminent.

For end-of-life care decisions, Parham said Christians should “use the best resources available. The biblical witness calls us to practice the gift of discernment.”

Byrd said she is “leaning heavily on the Lord” as she makes decisions that will affect not only her but her husband of 54 years, Richard.

“I know the Lord can heal me instantly if he wants to,” she said. “And if not, one way or the other, he's going to take care of me.”

Killing With Kindness

Job 3:20

QUESTION: Why is the church against euthanasia in instances where people are in terrible pain?

ANSWER: Let's respond to this question through the eyes of the family caring for a sick or dying loved one, because that is the context in which most of us face this agonizing issue.

We do not like to see loved ones sick, dying, or in pain. It goes against nature, moral training, and Christian faith to sit happily by when they suffer.

Our first instinct will be to try to find a way to save their lives. We will be supportive of aggressive treatment for as long as our loved one, the rest of the family, and the medical team hold out hope for a cure.

When such hope is no longer realistic and death is imminent and certain, we try to make our loved one as comfortable as possible. There will be little debate that even if the family ends now-futile medical treatments (such as chemotherapy), all reasonable efforts must be made to alleviate suffering. Beyond hoping for a miracle, all who love the dying person will pray for a peaceful death soon.

So far, so good. The question, however, seems to presuppose that this strategy is not good enough when the dying person is in “terrible pain.” At that point, it is implied, Christians are hardhearted in not supporting euthanasia.

This is a widely held view today. But it is wrong.

First we need to define some terms. Most thoughtful bioethicists or physicians accept the legitimacy of withholding or withdrawing medical treatments when they are no longer bringing benefit to an irretrievably dying patient. Nor is there any opposition to aggressive use of painkillers and other forms of palliative care.

But euthanasia is a different thing when it means (more than simply withdrawing medical treatment) ordering or implementing some act that kills a dying person: whether it is a lethal injection, an overdose of drugs, intentional starvation, or a gunshot to the head. Morally, it matters little if we do the deed ourselves, give our loved one the means to do the deed, or pay the doctor to do it. In any case, we are involved in an act that directly brings about the death of another human being.

The question is correct in implying that the church, or at least the great majority of its moral thinkers and traditions, opposes euthanasia. This opposition is based ultimately on the commandment “You shall not murder,” but is articulated in various other ways, including:

• the belief that the intentional taking of the life of a person who poses no threat to the community is a form of murder and is thus intrinsically wrong, even if it is done with good motives;

• the fear that the freedom to put to death sick or dying people is a violation of the mandate of the medical profession and would thus deeply corrupt it;

• the fear that base motives such as financial gain will interfere with the family decision-making process and lead to what is essentially sanctioned family murder of the old;

• the fear, based on historical experience, that political leaders will take over the power to kill the infirm and sick and use it to cut the government's medical expenses or advance some kind of perverse vision of the common good;

• an intuitive sense that a good and loving family, or a good and loving nation, will find some way to show its compassion to the sick and suffering that does not involve directly taking their lives.

Fundamentally, Christians oppose euthanasia because it simply does not fit with core Christian theological convictions. God is Creator, not us (Gen. 1:1). Human life is in his hands (Job 1:21). Illness and death are a tragic part of life in a sin-sick world (Gen. 3:19), and we must fight them hard — as Jesus fought them hard (Mt. 4:24). The time will come when every person's earthly life is over. At that point, our only hope lies in the resurrection promised to those who belong to Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:50-56).

We are called to heal the sick where we can, comfort the dying always, and entrust the dead to God. But we are never called, and we are never free, to hasten the dying across the threshold into eternity.

________

David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

Why Fix the Heart Value?

Job 3:20

Robert Destro works for the Catholic League for Religious Civil Rights. His job now focuses almost full-time on cases involving treatment given to the disabled.

One in particular jolted his conscience. A young California boy with Down syndrome needed a heart operation. But the boy's father wanted to withhold treatment. Why fix the heart value? the father asked. The boy was retarded.

Destro was outraged. “Are we going to stand by and watch this child die of medical neglect simply because he's retarded?” he asked.

Unbelievably, the state of California sided with the boy's father.

Euthanasia Is Hard - the First Time

Job 3:20

In a report a few years back, the Dutch government admitted that 1,000 persons were killed without giving consent. It was supposed to be a “voluntary” program.

American Dr. Edmund Pellegrino says that any time we deem any human life as of unacceptable quality - the infant with cerebral damage, the retarded, the chronically and terminally ill - we make that life a target for “merciful destruction” and accelerate the slide down the slippery slope to involuntary euthanasia.

A particularly chilling example of such “desensitivization” exhibited itself when Pellegrino talked with a physician from the Netherlands. “How does it feel to do euthanasia?” he asked the doctor. The doctor responded, “It's hard the first time.”

A Matter of Life and Death: From Darwin To Hitler

In all our contemporary conflicts over the teaching of evolution in schools, there's one question that nobody asks: To what does the embrace of Darwinism lead?

Historian Richard Weikart explores that topic in a book called From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. Despite that provocative title, Weikart is no sensationalist. He's not out to prove that Hitler and the Nazi party were directly inspired by Charles Darwin's theories. But what Weikart does demonstrate, through exhaustive research, is that Darwin's ideas about the origin of species helped create a culture that devalued human life. And in that culture, Nazism was able to thrive.

Darwin wasn't the first person to claim that the strong and healthy have higher value than the weak and sick, or that some races are inferior to others. Those ideas, Weikart says, were around long before Darwin. What Darwin provided was a scientific foundation for these beliefs. Weikart writes, “Only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life. ... It was no mere coincidence that these contentious issues emerged at the same time that Darwinism was gaining an influence. Darwinism played an important role in this debate, for it altered many people's conceptions of the importance and value of human life, as well as the significance of death.” And it wasn't just the sanctity of life that came under attack. Darwinism also strengthened what Weikart calls “scientific racism,” the theory that some races were less fully evolved than others.

Because of Darwin's theories, leading scientists in the early part of the twentieth century felt emboldened to propose radical ideas about how the sick or members of other races should be treated. Even as we read them today, some of their statements still sound shocking in their willful ignorance. Several scientists, for example, compared the mentally ill to apes. Textbooks were written that allegedly demonstrated scientifically that Africans, Native Americans, and Australian aborigines were subhuman. The eugenics movement — advocated in America as well as Europe — was able to bring about the sterilization of thousands of supposedly “inferior” people.

In that environment, a young Adolf Hitler found fertile soil for his radical ideas for the “super race.” Weikart could not trace those ideas directly to Darwin, as we have little evidence of which authors Hitler read and admired. But in his days in Vienna and Munich, theories about racial inequality were everywhere. As Weikart says, “Eugenics and euthanasia ... were embraced by a diverse crowd of secular social reformers,” and their ideas filled the popular press. The few authors we do know that Hitler admired were steeped in that culture.

Those ideas are still with us today. Look at what happened to Terri Schiavo a week ago. It's a good time for us to remind people of the social consequences of Darwinism as Weikart so well documents. It's bad enough to teach flawed theories in a classroom, but it gets downright dangerous when we let such theories lead us to a diminished view of human life and dignity.

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The Complexity of End-of-life Ethics Decisions

Robert Orr expected that some people attending a Dallas bioethics conference might chuck rotten tomatoes at him over his view that end-of-life decisions aren’t always as morally clear as some believe.

Orr, a physician and bioethicist at the University of Vermont’s College of Medicine and “family doctor of the year” in the state in 1995, is a Christian pro-lifer and an outspoken opponent of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. He also is an ethics consultant who has been involved in more than 1,400 medical cases and is the clinical director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, a Chicago-area bioethics think tank and one of the sponsors of the “Cutting-Edge Bioethics: Human Life on the Line” conference at Criswell College.

But his views on artificially administered feeding and hydration -- that such treatment is sometimes inappropriate -- pits him against many pro-lifers.

Orr, referencing the temptation to nap during an after-lunch late-April session, mused, “I’m actually hoping that some of you do fall asleep this hour. Because I’m going to say some things that some of you don’t want to hear. In conversations and so on, I’ve gotten the idea that some of you have already decided on some issues that I think are not necessarily already decided.”

In the cases of persons such as Terri Schiavo -- the severely disabled Florida woman who died this year after fluids and nutrition were removed -- Orr said family members nearly always make the right decision on what the patient would have wanted regarding extraordinary life-extending treatment. But such decisions are best made at the bedside, not in the courts, he said.

Removal of artificially given food and water -- with proper family or patient directives -- is appropriate when continued nutrition extends life but does not enhance the patient’s recovery chances, Orr stated. Removal of fluids, done with constant moistening of the mouth and with pain relief, is often preferable to extended suffering for terminal patients and sometimes may be the ethical choice, he said.

Orr used a graph to explain the “trajectory of death.” Some people die suddenly (accidents or heart attacks), some die predictably (terminal illness) and others “dwindle” (as many elderly people do).

But the most complex ethical decisions arise from cases of people with chronic disease, Orr said. They spiral downward, improve, worsen, and improve again. “There’s crisis after crisis -- you never know which one will be fatal,” he said. “And so the uncertainty of how they’re going to do really colors the issue of how you make decisions in these circumstances.”

Because medicine can prolong life far more than in previous generations, new issues arose in the 1970s and ’80s along with a slew of publicized court cases that centered on medical ethics and patient and family rights.

“Some of these media cases resulted in decisions about different types of treatment,” Orr said, citing specific cases such as that of Karen Ann Quinlin, when a ventilator was removed.

“Bottom line is that it’s OK sometimes to use less than maximal treatment even if that means sometimes the patient will die,” Orr said. “This change in approach led to advance directives, hospice, palliative care -- very positive things.”

Orr cited eight ways bioethicists learned from court cases between 1976 and 1990:

1) A competent patient has the right to refuse even life-prolonging treatment.

2) Incompetent patients have the same right and a surrogate may exercise that right.

3) The family is the presumptive surrogate, except in Britain where physicians make the call, sometimes with the family’s influence.

4) Courts are inappropriate places to settle end-of-life issues.

“A judge sitting on a probate bench for 15 years may see one, two, three limitation-of-treatment cases in his or her career,” Orr noted. “They’re not used to this. They’re not up for this. They’re not prepared. They would much rather prefer these decisions be made at the bedside.”

5) There is no specific diagnosis or treatment that must be taken to court for legal approval.

6) There is no difference between withholding and withdrawing of treatment.

“That was a tough pill for some people to swallow -- old folks like me,” Orr said.

7) Artificially administered fluids and nutrition are treatment.

8) Physicians or hospitals acting in good faith and without negligence will not be held civilly or criminally liable for limitation of treatment at the surrogate’s request.

“It was painful learning those eight lessons but those are pretty well accepted in North American bioethics are this point,” Orr said.

The limitation of treatment, he said, may involve such things as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, ventilators, chemicals to maintain blood pressure, artificially administered hydration and nutrition, radiation and chemotherapy -- even transfer from emergency to intensive care.

“I’ve got some news for you. When a patient dies in the hospital, 70 percent of the time the timing of death is a matter of choice,” Orr said. “Not the fact of death but whether the patient dies now or three days from now or three weeks from now is often dependent on whether or not we try to resuscitate, give one more blood transfusion, another round of antibiotics, chemotherapy, so on.”

Withholding treatment, Orr said, is usually an advance decision on a specific remedy; withdrawing treatment is to stop something already begun.

“There’s really no professional, moral or legal difference between those two,” Orr said. “...However, there may be a significant psychological difference. It’s harder to go into the ICU and turn down the dials on the ventilator knowing that the patient almost certainly will not survive than it was to not start the ventilator in the first place.

“Why might we consider limiting treatment in certain circumstances?” Orr asked. “Well, if the patient doesn’t want it -- that’s reason to consider it. Or if it’s not going to work, or if it’s outside the burden of care, or if the burdens of risk of treatment outweigh the benefits. And can we say it out loud -- if the cost outweighs the benefits?

“I’m not saying these are definitive answers but these are considerations we must bring onto the table when we’re talking about limitation of treatment,” Orr said.

When making ethical calls, Orr said he relies on four factors -- medical indications, patient preference, quality of life and context. He said the first two factors rely on facts; the other two are not so clear.

“What is the condition of the patient? What was the baseline condition a week ago before he had this stroke and is in this condition now? And a big question is, ‘What’s the likelihood of getting him back to an earlier condition?’

“Prognosis is not a fact, it’s a guess,” Orr stated.

Orr said a patient’s preference might be discerned from the values he expresses, whether he was coerced or pressured by family, finances or physicians. Also, one must consider whether an advanced directive or living will exists or the context in which he expressed his wishes. “The piece of paper is much less important than having a conversation with the family to know their goals and values.

“Sometimes there’s a very poor prognosis and you have no idea what the patient wants,” Orr said. That’s when he considers quality of life for the patient in the context of his or her life prior to medical treatment.

“Christians get very nervous when I mention the phrase ‘quality of life’ because human life is sacred. I’ll be at the head of the line preaching the sanctity of life, but life does have its quality. We have a stewardship of life and resources,” Orr insisted.

Sometimes, monetary considerations should inform whether one should pursue extraordinary means in terminal cases, Orr said.

As for quality of life, Orr said doctors and nurses are bad at assessing it. Their perspective of a paralyzed patient who can’t breathe without a machine contrasts with the patient who seems more functional.

Orr told of being called to an ICU to decide whether to put a 53-year-old man on a ventilator who had severe cerebral palsy and mental retardation.

“My knee-jerk response was that this is a pretty poor quality of life.”

But after talking with the man’s mother, who was across the country for a family reunion, Orr said the picture changed.

“For 50 years she had taken care of him at home. When she was in her 80s she could no longer lift him and admitted him to a nursing home where she fed him twice a day.” Orr speculated the nurse didn’t know the eating habits of the man as his mother did, prompting a perceived swallowing problem.

“She said, ‘Do whatever you need to do, put him on a machine and I’ll be on the next plane.’”

A few days later Orr returned to find the mother at her son’s bed where he was communicating with her. “I could not understand one syllable, but I noticed he was looking at me and talking. She said he wanted to know what kind of car I drive.”

After Orr told the man he drove a Saturn, the man went into a monologue about the vehicle’s specifications since this was his particular interest.

“I had no idea there was anybody home. I knew that, first, I was a stranger and, second, he was sick and had a certain level of function, then got a fever and was functioning at a lower level.

“So don’t be so quick to judge the quality of life, especially when dealing with strangers,” Orr said.

Although healthcare originated as a religious service with hospitals and hospices begun by religious orders, the secularization of healthcare is nearly complete, Orr said.

“We still have chaplains, but don’t let them get in the way. God talk is excluded,” he warned.

A revival in spirituality in healthcare may open the door to talk with a patient about his spiritual life although “a lot of things under that umbrella are spirits that are not the Holy Spirit,” he said.

Orr said four non-intrusive questions help a person have a conversation about a patient’s relationship with God: Do you belong to a faith tradition? How important is your faith to you? Do you belong to a faith community? How does your faith affect your life and how I should take care of you?

Life's Value Evident Even To Unbelievers

Even unbelievers have the law of God written on their hearts and can perceive the value of a human life -- even if they can’t identify the source of such value, according to an Oxford bioethicist.

“Conscience is there and we can use that conscience, we can appeal to that conscience,” E. David Cook, director of Oxford’s Whitefield Institute, said during the “Cutting-Edge Bioethics: Human Life on the Line” conference at Criswell College.

“We can work with people who do not share our God, do not share our faith, do not share all that we hold dear but have God’s law written on their hearts. Now maybe [their understanding] is twisted. It may be fallen, but it’s there. And we can use that and build on it.”

Cook’s lecture, “Who Lives, Who Dies? Allocating Healthcare Resource,” covered various factors healthcare professionals use in deciding who gets care and how far care should be extended.

Every country in the world, from second- and third-world nations to technologically advanced countries, has some level of healthcare crisis, Cook said. How they deal with it depends on the worldview of the decision-makers, he said.

Improved medical technology has expanded physicians’ ability to sustain life, creating an allocation-of-resources dilemma compounded by patients who are surviving longer, Cook said.

“It’s a problem today because of the very success of medical science.”

In a nationalized healthcare system such as Britain’s, economists have entered the debate, providing formulas for determining healthcare allocation.

“Healthcare economics has become a major opportunity for our failed economics professors,” Cook quipped.

During a healthcare conference that included leading British economists, healthcare professionals and politicians, and at which Cook was the lone ethicist, the term “quality-adjusted life years” was discussed to describe a formula for determining a numerical value for patients. Cook said the economists considered it an objective factor in making allocation decisions.

“You’ll discover if you are very young you will do very well under a quota system. If you are old, you won’t do so well. If you are well, you will do very well under a quota system. If you are sick, you will not do very well under a quota system.”

Various factors can affect one’s healthcare, including the perception that a patient has family members who monitor his care. Other factors include a perceived value to society, the ability to pay, age and gender bias and the worldview of healthcare providers.

“I tell elderly people, If you go to the hospital, tell them, ‘I’ve got lots of relatives and they’ll create lots of trouble if you don’t look after me well,’” Cook said. “because the single, elderly person is very vulnerable in a hospital setting.”

He told of one teaching hospital where a heart patient was removed from a machine to make room for a college history professor who suffered a heart attack. “Is the professor of European history worth more than someone who works in garbage disposal, who drives a bus, who’s at home looking after the family? We can have bias or we can have merit. He deserves or she doesn’t deserve. How do you decide who is worthy of treatment?”

In reality, rationed healthcare works on a first-come, first-served basis, Cook said.

“I know if I go on the first, second or third of the month, I am likely to get my flu vaccine. But if I go on the 25th, 26th, 27th of the month, ‘Sorry, no vaccine left.’ Because that’s the way they allocate -- first come, first served.”

Several European countries are pushing equal healthcare allocation as a human rights issue, and Christians can use this trend to appeal to the inherent value all people recognize in human beings, Cook said.

Regardless of what people claim, everyone has a worldview -- a lens through which they make value judgments, Cook said. “People will tell you they don’t have a worldview. They’re telling lies. Everybody has a point to see the world. Everybody has a regulative principle. It’s hard to find, but it is there.”

>From a Christian context, Cook said he has identified three dangers in allocating healthcare: reductionism, materialism and determinism:

• Reductionism, he explained, treats people as subjects of disease or illness and often overlooks the person for the symptoms. “The danger is that we depersonalize people.”

• Materialism views the person mechanically and not holistically. The trailblazing work in genetics, for example, has begun to thrive on competition over new breakthroughs without regard to moral boundaries -- contrary to early genetics work done to combat diseases, Cook noted. “We need holistic medicine ... seeing the whole person ... and we need to be concerned with spiritual well-being.”

• Determinism despiritualizes and dehumanizes people by identifying genetic risk factors and forecasting their health status.

Cook said Christians must contend for a biblical ethic in the marketplace of ideas, appealing to humans’ innate sense of morality.

“Genesis begins at the beginning,” he said. “When Jesus is asked moral questions, He goes back to the beginning. And we need to start at the beginning. But the beginning is not about us; the beginning is about God. It’s about who takes the initiative. It’s about God who reveals Himself ... He is the one who gives us that moral basis.”

Cook said he’s a regular guest on a television debate program called “The Moral Maze” with a conservative, a liberal and a gay activist. Often, one of them will apologize for using foul language.

“You see, conscience still makes them aware that there are things you should say and some things you ought not say. There are some ways you should treat people and some ways you ought not treat people. God has written His law on their hearts and minds.”

The Terri Schiavo case, for instance, has raised awareness of people worldwide about vulnerability at the end of life, Cook said.

“We can use that and build on it. It’s not just Christians who have dignity. Every person has dignity. And in our evangelism, and in our care in the hospital setting, we need to make sure that we give people the dignity and worth and value that they have because they are made in the image of God.”

The Old Testament abounds with commands to practice justice and mercy, Cook said, noting that “God is the perfect balance of justice and mercy and we are to be like Him” especially to the vulnerable.

“In healthcare we are vulnerable. We have family who are vulnerable. And at the point of vulnerability we are ministers of grace and love.”

Science Almighty: Adult vs. Embryonic Stem Cells [2 Articles]

The news is filled lately with stories about the promise of adult stem-cell therapy. Last fall, for example, researchers reported they successfully produced stem cells from adult skin cells, bypassing the need for embryonic stem cells. The Los Angeles Times reported recently that treatment using umbilical and marrow cells healed a boy of a fatal skin disease. Doctors said the treatment’s success may move that disease “off the incurable list” for other patients.

And the Family Research Council just released a report about more successes. “Currently, peer-reviewed studies have documented 73 different conditions in humans where patient health has been improved through adult stem cell therapy ... and over 1,400 FDA approved trials are ongoing.”

The paper describes a myriad of therapies, including the regeneration of heart tissue for a man with congestive heart failure; enabling a patient with Type I Diabetes to become insulin-free; and the treatment of a bone-cancer victim, who is now cancer-free. The report also cites adult stem-cell treatments that could treat trauma injuries and help patients with liver cancer.

Good news, indeed — and good news that we no longer have to wrestle with the moral question of embryonic stem-cell research.

Well, not so fast ... Both candidates for president still favor it, for they are marching to the drumbeat of those who want no restrictions on science.

Michael Kinsley, for example, a columnist who himself suffers from Parkinson’s, said bluntly, “This issue [that is, embryonic stem cell research] will not go away.”

“Scientifically,” Kinsley says, “it makes no sense to abandon any promising avenue just because another has opened up ... Every year that goes by, science opens new doors.”

I hope you see the problem: Just because science opens a door does not mean we should walk through it. In fact, science rarely asks the question, “Should we?” It only asks the question, “Can we?”

Kinsley’s response reflects a certain worldview: specifically, “scientism,” the belief that scientific investigation is the only means to knowledge and progress. As such, it must be free from restraints or interference. Scientists — not political leaders, and certainly not morally concerned citizens — ought to determine what is or is not permissible in the laboratory.

In addition, scientism, given its materialistic grounding, rejects any appeal to the sanctity of human life. The worldview of scientism teaches that we humans are merely an interesting and potentially useful collection of cells and genetic material.

The problem is, if a human embryo only has worth insofar as it can be USED for others, then what worth does a person have who is DEPENDENT on others — say, someone who is permanently disabled? See where that leaves Kinsley and all the rest of us? Vulnerable.

It is certain that the next president will revisit federal policy on embryo-destructive research. Even though it is not needed, proponents are not going to back down. That is why Christians, who believe in the sacredness of human life from conception to natural death, need to continue vigorous opposition to research on living human beings. If we do not, who is next in a world with science unchecked by ethical restraints?

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A similar article from BreakPoint WorldView Magazine: Viewpoint, July [30] 2008

“Materialism’s Blinders: Biotechnology and Truth,” by Chuck Colson

Your eyes may glaze over when you read the headlines about stem-cell research — debates over moral quandaries, federal funding, and legislative decisions about regulation. But you need to pay attention and speak up: The next debate may be about your own worth.

Much of the news you read or hear about focuses on embryonic stem-cell research — heralded as “vital” to medical research. However, while much study has focused on embryo-destructive research, nothing of significance has come of it: It has not worked. Meanwhile, reports about adult stem-cell research, which does not require destroying a human embryo to extract a stem cell, are beginning to appear frequently. For example, the Los Angeles Times recently reported that treatment using umbilical and marrow cells healed one boy of a fatal skin disease — thus, the treatment’s success may move that same disease “off the incurable list” for other patients.

Australian researchers have also joined in the race to advance ethical stem-cell research, producing stem cells from skin cells or adult cells, rather than from human embryos that are later destroyed. “What you then have the capacity to do with this type of cell or this technology is to make both patient-specific and disease-specific stem cell lines,” said Dr. Andrew Laslett of the Australian Stem Cell Centre. Groups in the United States, Japan, Scotland, Germany, and China are also pursuing this line of research.

Carron Morrow, as I noted on “BreakPoint” last August, can testify to the efficacy of ethical stem-cell research. In critical need of a new heart, Carron agreed to an experimental study that utilized her own bone marrow from her left hip. After cultivation, 30 million stem cells were injected into the right side of her heart. After she underwent a CT scan four months later, the doctor declared her heart to be “normal.”

So what’s the problem? If science is on the side of ethical research, then why are we still debating the moral problems with embryonic stem-cell research? Because it’s not about science — it’s about worldview.

SCIENCE AS WORLDVIEW

When scientists in Japan and Wisconsin announced a breakthrough in stem-cell research — reprogramming skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells — the news outlets expressed a hopeful end to the seemingly dreary debate. But as I said at the time, the struggle is far from over. There is a principle at stake — and advocates of embryo-destructive research don’t want to surrender it.

You see, winning the embryo-research debate is not about curing disease: It is about taking the upper hand over pro-life advocates, depicting them as hard-headed and uncaring. It’s a political battle.

It is also a worldview battle: pitting scientific materialism against the biblical worldview, which holds that all human life is sacred, from its earliest stages until natural death. The biblical view places restrictions on what we do to human embryos. Scientists and proponents of embryo research do not want restrictions, because they place science as the highest source of knowledge and morality. They worship, so to speak, at the altar of scientism.

“Scientism” is the belief that scientific investigation is the only means of knowledge — that scientists can get answers to everything, including philosophy and morality. Moreover, it holds that humans are nothing more than a collection of cells and genetic material — material to be used for whatever scientists believe to be useful.

In fact, columnist Michael Kinsley, who hopes stem cells will cure him of Parkinson’s disease, immediately jumped on the findings about skin cells being reprogrammed to act as stem cells — insisting that embryonic stem-cell research must still continue. He dismissed what he called the “intense minority who believe that a clump of a few dozen cells floating in a petri dish has the same human rights as you or I.” Never mind the fact that he also began his life as “a clump of a few dozen cells” — only he was allowed to live, while he and others believe we ought to exploit and kill other such embryos supposedly for the “greater good.” Some are more equal than others, it seems, as Orwell famously put it.

“This issue will not go away,” Kinsley proclaimed. “Scientifically, it makes no sense to abandon any promising avenue just because another has opened up.... Every year that goes by, science opens new doors...” See the emphasis? Science is the be-all, end-all. And morality and ethics must not hinder its march.

It is the ultimate reductionism: Since you can know truth only through what can be determined by science, questions like love, altruism, and the like are out of bounds — they are impermissible for inquiry. So, anything in the moral realm — the “should” or “ought to” questions — as opposed to the “what is” question, which is what science measures, never enters the equation. This view of science undermines the worth and dignity of human life. It reduces us to the sum of our material parts. It takes away the soul — what distinguishes us as humans.

As I wrote in HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?, we have bought into the myth that science is our savior: Through our ever-advancing science and technology, we will save ourselves. We are in the third stage of geneticist H. J. Muller’s history of life: attempting to reach inside and control our own nature. And scientists believe in inevitable progress, that the change they seek is always for the better. However, such faith that we can save ourselves through science can be sustained only if we deny the human capacity for barbarism — which is hard to do with a straight face in today’s world.

And that leads us to our present state: cannibalizing fellow humanity for the hoped-for — but thus far, elusive — benefit of others.

This is not to withhold sympathy for Michael Kinsley and others who are looking for cures to debilitating diseases. But when they reduce the importance and dignity of the earliest stage of human life — the human embryo — they reduce their own dignity, as well. If a human embryo only has worth as it can be used for others, then what worth has a person whose dependence on others, due to illness, can be deemed a drain to society? You see where Kinsley’s calculations take us — and himself.

THE ABOLITION OF MAN

It is this view of science that, taken to its logical conclusion, ends up putting its proponents’ own heads on the chopping block, as it were. For if humans are just commodities, just materials, then when your usefulness is outweighed by the cost of your “upkeep,” out you go. It’s the sort of utilitarian notion that has Business Week weighing the costs of caring for premature babies.

In fact, Britain offers us a view of the position in which we may place ourselves if the Church does not speak out consistently and effectively right now. In a myriad of cases, from parental rights to animal-human hybrids to birthing “savior siblings” to treat another child’s illness, humans are viewed as commodities — not individuals with inherent dignity and worth. For example, the Times of London reported that “Single women and lesbian couples won landmark parental rights ... as MPs voted to remove the requirement that fertility clinics consider a child’s need for a father.” So much for a child’s right to have a mother and a father — it’s about the consumer’s right to have a child as she sees fit.

That vote was part of the United Kingdom’s larger Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that pro-life Britons are fighting so valiantly against, seeking to uphold the sanctity of human life. As Centurion Philip Pedley, who lives in the Cayman Islands, observed, many in Britain look enviously at the battles for life being fought here in the United States. Why? They wish they had taken these cultural issues seriously 20 to 30 years ago, Pedley says. They wish they “had had a BreakPoint informing, alerting, and inspiring” them to action. They realize the truth of that maxim attributed to Jefferson — that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

If Christians don’t speak up about these critical life issues regarding embryonic stem-cell research, abortion, and even nanotechnology, who will? Much of the rest of society is going blindly along with who they think are the “all-knowing” scientists. Soon we will find ourselves in the same place as Christians in Britain, wishing we had done something sooner and finding life — even our own — at peril.

The Worth of A Life: Rationing Health Care?

You have probably heard a sick or dying person say, “What I wouldn’t give for one more day .... ” Regardless of the setting, the meaning is the same: Life is priceless, something worth fighting for.

It turns out that “priceless” and “worth fighting for” may have their limits, at least measured in dollars and cents.

Some 30 percent of Medicare expenditures go to caring for people in the last year of their lives. Internationally, many countries and insurance companies explicitly ration health care based on cost effectiveness. Simply put, if a year of “quality life” costs more than a certain amount — usually $50,000 — they simply will not pay for the care.

Medicare, in contrast, does not have a monetary threshold — at least not yet. Instead, Medicare makes a determination based on whether the treatment is “medically necessary and appropriate.”

A group of researchers at Stanford’s medical and business schools set out to determine if the $50,000 threshold was too low. They used kidney dialysis, which “typically has been used as a benchmark for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of all new technologies.”

In their new study, they conclude the $50,000 figure is much too low. They found that it costs $129,000 to provide a patient with what they called a “quality-adjusted” year of life — in their estimation, two years on dialysis was equivalent, quality wise, to one year off it.

To put it mildly, the implications of their findings are chilling. There is an obvious and disturbing question of how many people have died around the world because of the $50,000 threshold. While two years may not seem so long, it is priceless to those facing the end of life.

Even more frightening are the implications for the future: If Medicare were to follow the lead of other countries, how many Americans would be denied access to life-prolonging treatment?

To their credit, the authors of the study were aware of this and other ethical issues raised by their research. They also raised the prospect of the “sickest subgroups of patients” being “denied access to expensive treatments such as dialysis.”

It is not only the sickest who are at risk: When life is reduced to a cold calculation, the poor and marginalized are also at risk. We all are, as a matter of fact. Professor Peter Singer, for example, teaches packed classes at Princeton that funds should not be wasted on the terminally ill, or on abnormal babies — or who knows who is next, the severely disabled?

Few health care experts will go as far as the former governor of Colorado, who once famously said that the elderly have a “duty to die.” Showing how much it costs to keep people alive for another year or two, however, is the next-best-thing — the camel’s nose under the tent. It provides an economic rationale against prolonging life.

Now, there is a point at which we all must accept the inevitable. And that is why we should applaud efforts like hospice care that allow the terminally ill to die with true dignity.

But what we are talking about here is allowing people to die because we do not think their lives are worth $129,000 a year.

Whether they think the life is worth fighting for does not figure into the calculations — sorry.

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High-tech Bestiality: Life Imitates Art In the Lab

In H. G. Wells's classic novel THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, the sole survivor of a shipwreck lands on an island filled with human-animal hybrids, like “Leopard-Man” and “Swine-Folk.” There he discovers Dr. Moreau, a notorious medical researcher who was run out of London for his experiments. Though it was science-fiction in 1896, Wells's novel is frighteningly close to science today.

Whereas Moreau used dissection and surgery to create his hybrids, today researchers are using IN VITRO manipulation. Embryonic cells from one species, like goats, are inserted into the blastocyst of another, such as sheep. The result is a creature, the “geep,” possessing characteristics of both species.

Researchers call these man-made combinations “chimeras,” after the mythological creature that was part lion, goat, and serpent. And experiments are not limited to dumb animals. Researchers have created pigs with “partly human livers” in hopes of solving organ transplant shortages. Mice with human cells, including brain cells, are used in testing drugs and in Parkinson's research.

These successes have prompted researchers to think about something involving a species closer to humans: chimpanzees. The genetic similarities between humans and chimpanzees make the temptation to create such a human-chimp chimera almost irresistible. As with cloning and embryonic stem-cell research, advocates promise medical miracles if they're allowed to proceed without interference.

The President's Council on Bioethics disagrees. At its March meeting, it discussed the “reasonable boundaries” between “acceptable” research and the kind that would amount to “high-tech bestiality.”

In Congress, Senator Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas has introduced a bill that would “ban the production of human-animal chimeras.” If passed, the United States would join Canada in prohibiting this kind of research.

Even the magazine SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN says that some human-animal chimeras “disquietingly blur the line between species.” It notes that “no one knows what the consequences will be as the proportion of human cells in an animal increases.”

One possible consequence is that this “intermingling of tissues could ... make it easier for infectious animal diseases to move into humans. ... This hopping of species barriers can be particularly devastating because the [human] immune systems ... are so unprepared for them.” The list of pandemics thought to have originated in such “hopping” includes the 1918 flu pandemic that killed at least 40 million people, and HIV/AIDS.

But even if the research were safe, we ought to be opposed it. The embryonic stem cells needed to produce a chimera can come about only by destroying a human life. And the assault on the dignity of life will not stop there. What would be the moral status, for example, of the human-animal chimera? Would it be human or an animal? The temptation would be animal, of course. And as in Wells's novel, man's proclivity to view his fellow creatures as a means to his own ends is well-documented.

The time to stop this travesty is now. Otherwise, something much more precious than a ship will be lost: that is, our appreciation of what it means to be human.

________

This commentary first aired on July 13, 2005.

Life Imitating Art?: Biotechnology and Science Fiction

Our decisions regarding upcoming biotechnology issues like stem-cell research and human cloning will do more to shape our future than any other decisions we could make.

Thus, understanding the implications of biotechnology isn't just important: It's vital. And where can we turn for that information? One answer may surprise you, although it shouldn't: science fiction.

Some months ago, I recommended Kazuo Ishiguro's recent novel NEVER LET ME GO. It is set in England, where human clones are used for spare body parts. Unlike similar stories, Ishiguro's clones know that they are clones, but they are so well-indoctrinated that they passively accept their fate.

The only mild dissent from this arrangement comes when the clones begin creating art and, therefore, prove that they have souls — that is, that they are human. It's Ishiguro's way of reminding us in poignant fiction that this kind of exploitation is possible only if you first deny the humanity of those being exploited — like human embryos.

The parallels between the England of the novel and our own time are clear: In the media, the possibilities of cures to all kinds of dreaded diseases — however unlikely — take priority over all other considerations. Likewise, when Ishiguro writes about the “new possibilities” that kept people from “taking stock” and “asking the sensible questions,” he's describing our world as much as the novel's.

Clear-sightedness about the moral implications of biotechnology isn't limited to books. The recent movie THE ISLAND will be remembered as a huge box-office flop. That's unfortunate, because it also was a valuable lesson on the perils of cloning.

THE ISLAND is set in a suspiciously hygienic underground complex whose residents believe that they are the sole survivors of an environmental catastrophe. The winner of a nightly lottery is told that he or she is being sent to “the Island” to help repopulate the surface. That, of course, turns out to be a lie: They are actually clones created for their body parts, and the real “prize” is a one-way ticket to a dissecting table.

While the second half of the film is typical summer-flick fare, the film's “lottery” serves as a metaphor for the emptiness of the assurances and promises being made by that world's proponents. THE ISLAND reminds us to be skeptical about the brave new world we're being promised by today's advocates of biotechnology.

And speaking of a “brave new world,” seventy-three years after it was first published, Aldous Huxley's novel by that name remains an irrefutable rebuke to those who refuse to see the dark possibilities of biotechnology. Huxley reminds us that biotech is more likely to become the means of social control than personal liberation.

A society that believes genetic “perfection” is possible will eventually make such “perfection” mandatory — if not by law, by financial and societal pressures.

You see, science fiction is not only about aliens and spaceships: It is also about showing where present trends — technological and moral — lead us.

That's why I suspect that the world portrayed in books and even in the movies is a lot closer to reality than what's being promised by more “respectable” sources. Science fiction exposes the kind of world where life imitating art is a very bad thing.

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Cutting It: Engineering Human Evolution

In the 1998 film GATTACA, the hero, Vincent, says, “I'll never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God's hands, rather than her local geneticist.” GATTACA describes a not-at-all-distant future where biotechnology has rendered many undesirable human traits avoidable — genetic engineering — but at a very high social cost.

Today, life is on the verge of imitating art, and yet, we're still caught unawares.

Because his mother “put her faith in God's hands,” Vincent's options are limited, beginning with his name: His father, rather than name him “Anton” after himself, reserves the honor for his genetically enhanced — and, thus, superior — younger brother.

Vincent's almost super-human determination enables him to go where no “in-valid,” as his society calls the non-enhanced, is supposed to go. In GATTACA, we not only glimpse the power of the human spirit, but also the spiritual poverty of the promise of genetic perfection.

Only seven years after GATTACA was on the screen, as Joel Garreau tells us in his new book, Radical Evolution, we are at a “turn point of history,” where technology can alter our bodies, thus raising the gravest of questions: what it means to be human.

Garreau asks readers to look fifteen years into the future: Your daughter has graduated from college with honors and gotten into a top law school. At home during a break, she tells you about some of her genetically enhanced classmates: They have photographic memories; they're more creative than anyone she could ever imagine; they can go for days without sleep yet suffer no ill effects; and they're even better looking than everyone else. How can she compete?

Science fiction? No. Try soon-to-be science fact. Thanks to genetic, robotic, information, and nano technologies — collectively known by the acronym GRIN — mankind is poised for what some call “engineered evolution.”

Not only will the results of this “evolution” be unprecedented, but so will the speed at which it happens. “Pain vaccines,” “memory pills,” and “gene doping,” which may turn even the scrawniest kid into a Hercules, are being tested as I speak.

That leaves us with very little time to debate if and under what conditions this “evolution” ought to take place. Within our kids' lifetimes, parents may find themselves playing desperate games of “catch-up” with other, more affluent parents who are willing to do and spend whatever it takes to give their kids an edge over their competitors.

And then there's the question of those who could never afford such “edges.” Recent events on the Gulf Coast have reminded us the poor are, indeed, always with us. What will happen to our democracy when “in-valids” go from science-fiction to social reality?

This raises the mother of all ethical questions: What does it mean to be human in a world where the lines between “natural” and “artificial” and “man” and “machine” are blurred? If Garreau is right, we have very little time before the future gets here and fallen human nature sweeps moral concerns aside.

That's why Christians need to get on board. Now! If not, we will find ourselves in a future asking: Whatever possessed us to put our faith in geneticists and other technologists instead of the living God?

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Is the Sanctity of Human Life An Outmoded Concept?

Job 3:20

Peter Singer has seen the future, and it does not include the sanctity of life. To be more specific, Singer presents his argument about the future in a forum published in the September/October 2005 edition of FOREIGN POLICY. The magazine asked a number of leading intellectuals to suggest what ideas, institutions, and features of contemporary life will be left behind as human beings rush into a bold new future. As Peter Singer sees it, confidence in the sanctity of human life must be abandoned in order for humanity to be redefined in the new millennium.

Singer is no stranger to controversy, of course. He currently serves as Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. The very fact that Peter Singer holds a distinguished chair in the field of bioethics at a major American university should signal all morally sensitive persons that the world of academia is in big trouble.

Singer attracted international attention and controversy with the publication of his 1975 book, ANIMAL LIBERATION. Then a professor at LaTrobe University in Canada, Singer argued that the concept of animal species is, in itself, “as irrelevant to moral status as race or sex.” As he explained his own position, Singer argued that “all beings with interest are entitled to equal consideration.” In other words, animals should be accorded equal rights with human beings, and the very fact that an individual is a member of the species HOMO SAPIENS does not mean that individual is entitled to human rights and the presumption of a right to live. In other words, every human being is not necessarily a human person.

“During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments,” Singer asserts in his FOREIGN POLICY essay. “By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct.”

Looking over the last several months, Singer argues that the year 2005 “may be seen as the year in which that position [the sanctity of human life] became untenable.” In his view, controversy over embryonic stem cell research, the acceptance of human cloning experiments by South Korean scientists, and the tortuous controversy over Terri Schiavo, may lead to a basic change in American public opinion. Singer believes that technological developments will “drive this debate” and lead to a new understanding of the human organism -- an understanding that accepts a basic distinction between a human body and a human person. “Hence, a decision to remove the feeding tube will be less controversial, for it will be a decision to end the life of a human body, but not of a person,” he explains.

Singer is also confident that the acceptance of euthanasia in Europe -- including the euthanasia of newborns, young children, and the elderly -- will lead to a growing acceptance in the United States. “As we approach 2040, the Netherlands and Belgium will have had decades of experience with legalized euthanasia, and other jurisdictions will also have permitted either voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide for varying lengths of time.” Thus, “This experience will puncture exaggerated fears that the legalization of these practices would be a first step toward a new holocaust. By then, an increasing proportion of the population in developed countries will be more than 75 years old and thinking about how their lives will end. The political pressure for allowing terminally or chronically ill patients to choose when to die will be irresistible.”

Singer is consistent in asserting that the sacredness of human life is an outmoded and morally useless belief. In a notorious commentary published in the July 1983 issue of PEDIATRICS, Singer began by offering a similar prophecy: “The ethical outlook that holds human life to be sacrosanct -- I shall call it the 'sanctity-of-life view' -- is under attack. The first major blow to the sanctity-of-life view was the spreading acceptance of abortion throughout the Western world.”

In 1983, Singer was serving as professor in the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University in his native Australia. Nevertheless, his article in PEDIATRICS incited controversy in the United States. After all, PEDIATRICS is the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In his commentary, Singer argued that infanticide or euthanasia should be seen as morally acceptable under certain conditions. As a matter of fact, he implied that infanticide could well be a morally superior choice when compared to a decision to allow some infants to live.

Consider this chilling statement: “If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication, and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant.”

Singer's point is clear -- a dog who is able to communicate in a rudimentary way is superior to a human infant who lacks an equal ability to communicate.

In his book PRACTICAL ETHICS, Singer argues, “The fact that a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species HOMO SAPIENS, is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather, characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings.”

Ponder that statement carefully, for it is a manifesto for killing human infants. Furthermore, Singer presses his case to make clear that he is not limiting his argument to the killing of infants who lack the potential to develop such qualities. “This conclusion is not limited to infants who, because of irreversible intellectual disabilities, will never be rational, self-conscious beings,” Singer clarifies. As in his argument for abortion, Singer asserts “that the potential of a fetus to become a rational, self-conscious being cannot count against killing it at a stage when it lacks these characteristics.”

Singer would accept a basic assumption of a right to life only for those beings he judges to have a capacity to envision a future. He would grant the status of human personhood only to those human beings who are able to communicate, to relate to others, and to possess what he would stipulate as a minimal understanding of self-consciousness in time. In short, Singer would grant a healthy dog a greater claim on life than a healthy human infant or an elderly person with Alzheimer's. But more recently, Singer has courted controversy with his argument that human sexuality should be liberated from any moral limits except consensuality. In an interview with Marvin Olasky of WORLD magazine, Singer asserted that he sees “no moral problem” with necrophilia. He has argued that human beings and animals may be able to have “mutually satisfying” sexual relationships. What he terms “zoophilia” should be illegal, he says, only if it involves cruelty.

Singer's appointment to a prestigious chair in bioethics at Princeton University led to world-wide controversy. Publisher Steve Forbes took a public stand and pledged to end all financial contributions to his alma mater “so long as Peter Singer remains a tenured professor there.”

Nevertheless, Princeton's president, Harold T. Shapiro, defended Singer's appointment.

In a statement published in the PRINCETON WEEKLY BULLETIN on December 7, 1998, Shapiro defended Singer's academic credentials. He went on to argue: “But the test in making any faculty appointment is not whether we agree with the findings of a professor's scholarship; the test is the power of the professor's intellect and the quality of his or her scholarship and teaching. An important part of our purpose as a university is to ask the most difficult and fundamental questions about human existence, however uncomfortable this may be.” That may sound like lofty academic discourse, but we should note carefully that this argument excludes any consideration other than a potential professor's intellect and teaching ability. President Shapiro cannot possibly stand by this argument, for it would require him to hire professors who would be proponents of theories, worldviews, and ideologies even he would surely find morally reprehensible. When President Shapiro tries to explain that Princeton serves “these central purposes of a university by appointing faculty members like Professor Singer whose work is intellectually astute, morally serious, and open to engagement with others,” he is defining “morally serious” in a manner that is seriously deficient.

Singer understands what is at stake. “We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing an immortal soul,” he argues. “Our better understanding of our own nature has bridged the gulf that was once thought to lie between ourselves and other species, so why should we believe that the mere fact that a being is a member of the species HOMO SAPIENS endows its life with some unique, almost infinite, value?”

Singer dismisses the Christian confidence in the sanctity of human life as “religious mumbo-jumbo” that must be discarded. In the case of Professor Peter Singer we face the quintessential warning of where the modern, secular, evolutionary understanding of humanity must lead. Unless we believe that human beings truly are “a special form of creation, made in the image of God,” we will inevitably slide into the moral calculations and frightening ideology of Peter Singer and those who share his worldview.

Peter Singer thinks he has seen the future, and he writes with renewed confidence that the sanctity of human life is an idea that will soon be discarded. Christians now face the urgent responsibility to prove him wrong.

Do Not Cast Me Off In the Time of Old Age: the Challenge of the Aged, Part 1

Ruth 4:15

“Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength fails.” This is the prayer of the Psalmist in Psalm 71:9. Like so many before and after him, the Psalmist fears being forsaken when he is old. In our own times, this concern takes on an entirely new magnitude, as the ranks of the elderly and aged grow at an unprecedented rate.

This is the concern raised by Eric Cohen and Leon R. Kass in their essay, “Cast Me Not Off in Old Age,” published in the January 2006 edition of COMMENTARY. Cohen, director of the program in biotechnology and American democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Kass, the former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, have combined to write a most compelling essay on the challenge represented by millions of the aged among us.

Looking back to 2004 and the tragedy of Terri Schiavo, Cohen and Kass understand that the Schiavo case “revealed deep divisions in how Americans view debility and death.” As they explain, “Some saw pulling her feeding tube as an act of mercy, others as an act of murder. Some believed she possessed equal human dignity and deserved equal care despite her total lack of self-awareness; others believed keeping her alive year after year was itself an indignity.”

Beyond this, the Schiavo case indicated the limits of our national consensus about such matters as end-of-life ethics, the use of extended medical technologies, the validity of “living wills,” and the overarching theme of personal autonomy.

Yet, Cohen and Kass understand that the Schiavo case, while not unprecedented, did not represent the usual context in which such issues arise. “In our aging society, most severe disability involves instead the frail elderly, who gradually but inexorably decline into enfeeblement and dementia, often leaving grown children to preside over their extended demise. The greatest challenges involve not only deciding when to let loved ones die, but figuring out how to care every day for those who can no longer care for themselves.”

Death, disease, debility, and the challenges of growing old have been part of the human experience since the Fall. Once death became a natural part of the human experience, the question became how and when death might come and what kind of experience would precede natural death. Yet, as Cohen and Kass understand, “the circumstances in which most Americans age and die are increasingly 'unnatural' and surely unprecedented.”

In making this judgment, Cohen and Kass point to the fact that the development of high-tech medicine, the elimination of so many causes of natural death among the young, and the demographic reality of an increasing percentage of the population counted among the elderly, represents a new experience, not only for this generation, but for the human race.

Interestingly, the authors cite Thomas Jefferson who, when asked if he would choose to live over again, said yes -- but only between the ages of twenty-five and sixty. Jefferson saw no purpose in reliving his childhood and adolescence, and he nurtured few illusions about the reality of advanced age when, he wrote, “the powers of life are sensibly on the wane, sight becomes dim, hearing dull, memory constantly enlarging its frightful blank and parting with all we have ever seen or known, spirits evaporate, bodily debility creeps on palsying every limb, and so faculty after faculty quits us, and where then is life?”

Jefferson's experience -- living into such advanced age -- was relatively unusual in his own generation, but it will be the normal and normative experience of millions now living. As Cohen and Kass understand, previous generations saw so many persons die “in the nursery of life or at the peak of their flourishing.” In other words: “Living to old age was the dream of the vulnerable many; living with old age was the problem of the fortunate few.”

The “fortunate few” of previous generations is now the “vulnerable many” of our own day, who, along with their loved ones and the larger society, must come to terms with what it means to age and to be a part of a society in which so many others are also aging.

As the authors report, the average life expectancy in the United States is now seventy-eight years and rising. As recently as 1900 the life expectancy of the average American was only forty-seven. Those over the age of eighty-five represent the fastest growing segment of the American population.

The good news is that many of these older Americans are living fulfilled and relatively healthy lives, extended into many years of retirement and continued contributions to society. Accordingly, “On balance, it is a wonderful time to be old, and the democratization and expansion of old age are among modernity's greatest achievements.”

But this is not all there is to the picture. Cohen and Kass warn that we are now witnessing the development of a “mass geriatric society” which will present this country with massive economic, social, medical, political, and ethical challenges.

Cohen and Kass have both been deeply involved in the President's Council on Bioethics. Kass served as chairman of the Council, and Cohen currently serves as senior research consultant. Thus, their essay should be read in light of the Council's recently-released report, TAKING CARE: ETHICAL CAREGIVING IN OUR AGING SOCIETY. For any number of reasons, most having to do with the fact that the news media generally do not see this issue as adequately sensationalistic, the report has not received the attention it demands.

Cohen and Kass see a coming “perfect social storm” represented by a fast-growing proportion of the elderly and a shrinking number of younger adults who will be able to care for family members, loved ones, and others. Americans are living longer, but the process of death now often involves an extended period of enfeeblement and, in all too many cases, dementia. The authors cite a recent Rand study that indicated that approximately forty percent of current deaths in the United States are now preceded by a period of physical, and often mental, debility that may last as long as a decade. Of course, this may include the onset of Alzheimer's disease. At present, an estimated four million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's. Cohen and Kass report that the number is expected to rise to over thirteen million by the middle of this century, “all of them requiring many years of extensive, expensive, and exhausting full-time care.”

One of the benefits of the analysis offered by Cohen and Kass is the focus on how the rise of a “mass geriatric society” is complicated by the decline of the natural family. Put bluntly, Cohen and Kass recognize that “precisely as the need is rising, the pool of available family caregivers is dwindling. Families are smaller, less stable, and more geographically spread out.” Beyond this, most women are now employed outside the home, and there are already shortages of trained medical personnel available to tend to those who can't afford such assistance.

Thus, an explosion in the number of older Americans needing assistance and care comes at the very moment that finds the family weakened by ideological, cultural, economic, and social forces. The problems of old age are now routinely assigned to institutions, nursing homes, hospitals, and other settings – a far cry from when most Americans aged and died at home surrounded and aided by family members.

The Biotech Century: Dream Or Nightmare?

Nations around the world are banning human cloning. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the practice to be banned everywhere. In addition, one of the biggest and most newsworthy human cloning experiments, in Korea, turned out to be a complete fake.

Well, it would look like the “Biotech Century,” as some have been calling it, is off to an unpromising start.

If so, that's something for which we can be grateful, because the closer we get to the cloning and commodification of human life — even for purposes that seem well-intentioned — the more we endanger all human beings.

President Bush put his finger on this when he said in his State of the Union address, “A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life.” The president went on to ask Congress for a ban on “the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms.” Notice that includes both reproductive cloning AND so-called therapeutic cloning. It's tremendously important that the president made that distinction clear, because it's an appalling sign of our times just how many people — including many of our United States senators — think it's perfectly fine to clone a human embryo so long as you plan to experiment on it and then destroy it before it can be brought to birth.

You may recall I talked recently about former senator and ambassador Jack Danforth and his slams against his fellow Christians. One of the many things he blames us for is “criminaliz[ing] research because we want to save cells in a petri dish that will never be implanted in a uterus and never become people.”

That kind of dreadful misreading of such a crucial issue is unpardonable, especially coming from a Christian. Unfortunately, however, it's all too common among lawmakers who, unlike Danforth, are still active in politics and have the power to make laws that would allow us to buy, sell, and experiment on human life. And that's why, despite so many promising developments around the world, we're having such a hard time pushing through a comprehensive cloning ban in the United States.

And as if that weren't bad enough, we have another threat to deal with on the biotechnology front: the advancing science of nanotechnology. If cloning threatens to redefine what it means to be human, nanotechnology takes it to the next level. My friend and colleague Nigel Cameron, of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, puts it this way: Abortion and euthanasia are taking life, cloning is making life, and nanotechnology and cybernetics are faking life. Nanotechnology — which, again, is being promoted as helping those with dread diseases — holds the dangerous potential of controlling or possibly even re-engineering human nature.

I know this stuff is complicated, and if you're like I am, science is hard to understand sometimes. But this is life-and-death stuff, and we have got to know more about it and be able to press for ethical guidelines.

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Legitimate Concerns: Illegal Beings

In recent years, we have heard a lot of arguments in favor of therapeutic cloning, that is, cloning humans for medical purposes only. Reproductive cloning that would result in live births, we're told, is something no one wants. And so lawmakers claim that the government ought to ban reproductive cloning but allow — even encourage — therapeutic cloning, as if anyone could control what's done with the clone once produced.

But if no one is interested in reproductive cloning, how do we explain a recent book by Santa Clara University Law School professor Kerry Lynn Macintosh? In ILLEGAL BEINGS: HUMAN CLONES AND THE LAW, Macintosh argues that opponents of human reproductive cloning are bigots, and she compares anti-cloning laws to anti-miscegenation laws that forbade blacks and whites from marrying.

Just as those laws were designed to keep mixed-race babies from being born, anti-cloning laws show prejudice against another group of possible babies: human clones.

Macintosh believes that whether or not reproductive cloning is banned, some scientist somewhere will go ahead with it anyway. (And on that score, I'm afraid, she is right.) In the meantime, she argues, a ban on cloning will have helped build prejudice against clones. Thus, the human clones who are born will face a society that treats them as “a suspect class” and routinely discriminates against them. “It is human nature to fear that which is dangerous and to hate that which we fear,” she explains. “Unfortunately, that includes human clones.”

Well, Macintosh's logic is fundamentally flawed. She doesn't deal with the most basic objection: You cannot argue that we must legally be allowed to clone human beings on the basis that they will be treated badly if they are illegally created. The first question is whether it's right or wrong to create them in the first place.

Is it wrong? Macintosh tries hard to prove that it isn't, but she fails to address troubling questions.

For example, she doesn't deal with the fact that human clones are actually not their parents' children. A clone would be the genetic twin of the person from whom he or she was cloned. Imagine how this would undermine family relationships. But Macintosh argues, “Families built through [current] assisted reproductive technologies are stable and loving.” That's no comparison at all. Families developed through current reproductive technologies don't result in an adult raising his or her own sibling as if that sibling were an offspring.

Macintosh also ignores what this will do to children who are manufactured this way. As my colleague Nigel Cameron at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity told PBS, “We're moving into a whole redefinition of the way in which children and parents relate, because children become people whom we can design, rather than if they just come to us as gifts.... We're talking about children who are also consumer products.”

Now, we may say this is much ado about nothing: Nobody is going to clone humans. Oh, yeah? A generation ago, folks said gays could not get marriage rights. All radical social movements start the same way — generally, as here, arguing on the grounds of discrimination. That's why a ban on all human cloning is urgently needed. Otherwise, the lives that will be devalued will not only be the clones', but ours, as well.

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Christian Morality and Test Tube Babies (part 2)

The usual practice in IVF calls for the fertilization of numerous embryos, which are then frozen until needed for implantation in the womb. The high costs involved in these procedures, along with the risk of embryos failing to implant and thrive, means that doctors usually insist on fertilizing and implanting several embryos at a time. Though several embryos are implanted in most procedures, several more generally remain frozen and in a state of biological suspension.

This may be the most devastating moral reality of the IVF technology. These embryos -- fully human in chromosomal development -- are treated as human “seedlings.” Sometimes euphemistically called “Embryo Eskimos,” these embryos are denied human dignity and are reduced to a frozen existence, awaiting either implantation, indefinite storage, or willful destruction. In recent years thousands of human embryos have been destroyed in Great Britain and the United States, as they were no longer needed or wanted for implantation. The argument for this destruction is often couched in “humane” language, implying that it is better to be destroyed than indefinitely frozen.

How does a couple (or an individual) deal with the knowledge that their genetic offspring are suspended in a state of frozen non-existence? This horrible knowledge is a reminder that violating limits always promises great gain, but it also comes at a great (and even greater) cost.

The legal status of the embryos is now the subject of legal actions and judicial determination. In the case of a divorce, who “owns” the embryos? When a genetic “parent” dies, who inherits the embryos? The case of Steven and Maureen Kass illustrates the dilemma. Five fertilized embryos remained after the couple's divorce. Later, Maureen wanted to have the embryos implanted and to raise the children. Steven did not want to have children, especially with his ex-wife, and wanted to donate the embryos to medical research. A New York judge ruled for Maureen, declaring that fertilized embryos were the possession of the woman. An appellate court ruled that both “parents” must give consent to implantation. Other cases are pending across the nation.

These questions underline another problem with the IVF technologies. It is now possible for an embryo to be implanted years after fertilization, opening the opportunity for a woman to give birth to her aunt, or even the genetic sibling of her grandmother. For that matter, an embryo can be implanted in a woman of advanced years, pushing the limits of reproductive capacity. Do we adjust our understanding of family and generational transfer to this new reality? This further undermines the integrity of the family and God's order of creation.

Finally, the use of embryos in medical research brings a new threat to the sanctity of human life. Restrictions on experimentation with embryos are being progressively lifted, with some arguing that the thousands of “unused” frozen embryos represent an invaluable resource for biomedical experimentation and genetic research. This is hauntingly reminiscent of Nazi medical research. These embryos are human life worthy of full legal and ethical protection. Current debates over the use of embryos in human stem cell research are often fueled by these arguments, with proponents of embryonic stem cell research arguing that it would be immoral to “waste” these human embryos that will never be implanted in any womb. This is the moral reasoning of the Culture of Death.

The embryos “produced” by IVF technologies face danger in the womb, as well as in the laboratory. Multiple implantations -- done for the sake of maximum effectiveness and minimum financial cost -- lead regularly to multiple pregnancies. As with the use of fertility drugs, these multiple pregnancies can result in the fertilization and implantation of several embryos.

The reality of “selective reduction” came to the attention of most Americans through the media interest in the McCaughey septuplets in 1997. Doctors and medical ethicists debated the morality of allowing so many fetuses to remain in the womb, progressing toward full development. Many doctors argued for the moral imperative of selective reduction, which means the removal and destruction of selected embryos or fetuses.

Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, explained, “Many people believe couples who agree to infertility treatments must not only be informed about -- but must consent to -- the potential need for selective reduction even before beginning the treatments.”

This abhorrent argument reveals the casual disrespect in which the embryo is held by so many who are ready and willing to destroy innocent life in the name of life-giving technology. IVF technologies destroy even as they claim to create, and the termination and disposal of human embryos is a reminder that the gruesome reality of the Third Reich is never far from us. A society that will destroy human life and discard unwanted frozen embryos has lost the vital sense of human dignity which is foundational to civilized society. A culture comfortable with the knowledge that fetuses are destroyed in the name of life can rationalize itself into arguments identifying some humans -- born and unborn -- as “life unworthy of life.” The abortion culture hangs over the IVF laboratory.

In early 1999, advertisements appeared in newspapers of the Ivy League schools and other leading national universities offering $50,000 for an egg donor. The statement stipulated that the donor must be a healthy woman who had scored at least 1400 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and was at least five-foot-ten in height. The woman would be required to undergo thorough genetic screening and to offer several useable eggs for fertilization and transfer. Within a few days, over 200 women applied to be the donor.

“I think we are moving to children as consumer products,” said Lori Andrews, a Chicago law professor. Nonsense, argued Norman Fost, head of the medical ethics program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He asserted that “whether children are valued and how they are treated has very little to do with how they are conceived.”

Given a Christian worldview commitment, based in a biblical understanding of the integrity of the marital bond, the integrity of the family, and the sanctity of human life -- from the moment of chromosomal exchange to the moment of natural death -- we cannot agree that all this has little to do with how children are conceived.

The excruciating pain of a married couple unable to achieve conception is understandable, but this does not mean that all technologies are therefore allowable or morally acceptable. Christian couples must not embrace the new reproductive technologies without clear biblical and theological reflection. At a bare minimum, Christian couples must commit to the implantation of all embryos, and the selective reduction of none. But this does not alter the fundamentally artificial character of the technology or the moral status of the embryos, and thus IVF presents grave moral issues to the Christian conscience. For these reasons, it cannot be encouraged.

We must oppose the denial of human dignity to the unborn and often forgotten frozen embryos. We must oppose the use of these technologies by those who would subvert the family, the marital covenant, and the Creator's gift of sexual union and procreation. We must deny that what is technologically possible is therefore morally acceptable. We must affirm our creaturely limits and trust our gracious Creator as the Lord of Life, who imposed those limits for our good. And we must learn to count the costs before those limitations are denied.

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This is Part Two of a two-part series.

The Devil's Calculus: Biotechnology and the Vulnerable

On May 12, 2006, Hwang Woo-suk, the “disgraced cloning scientist,” was indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and ethics violations.

The scientific community has rightly distanced itself from Hwang over his falsification of data. But there is still one thing that his efforts and much of the biotech industry share in common: a utilitarian disregard for the dignity and sanctity of human life.

Prosecutors charge that Hwang used falsified data showing cloning success to defraud investors of at least $2 million. However, the real outrage lies in how Hwang obtained the eggs for the research whose results he falsified. The media referred to “junior researchers” having “donated” their eggs. In this case DONATED is a euphemism, suggesting a voluntary transaction between equals — not the case here.

For starters, there are reports that Hwang and his senior associates “applied pressure to team members” to donate their eggs. One researcher reportedly told Hwang she wouldn't do it, to which he replied, “Why not?” She then went through the procedure “out of worry” for her professional prospects.

Even without overt pressure, junior researchers are, as the NEW YORK TIMES put it, in a “dependent relationship” with their superiors — thus, vulnerable. Especially is this true “in the strict hierarchy of a scientific laboratory in a Confucian[-influenced] society like South Korea,” where “junior members often feel great pressure to please their superiors.”

Hwang's taking advantage of his researchers is emblematic of efforts to do anything to clone human beings and to do embryonic stem-cell research. The physical differences between adult women and human embryos should not obscure the utilitarian calculus involved. Neither should it matter that Hwang was, by all accounts, an egomaniac, while other researchers are depicted as altruistic visionaries. The clear point is that those least able to resist — whether subordinate researchers or human embryos — are expected to sacrifice themselves for some “greater good.”

This is the issue in a measure pending in Congress to allow federally funded research on embryonic stem-cells obtained from frozen embryos. The treatment of these embryos, who were created for IN VITRO fertilization, represents utilitarian logic at its “finest.” They were abandoned when they no longer served their original purpose. So now we can destroy them to fulfill a new purpose. The justification for this proposal amounts to: “They shouldn't go to waste.”

Sadly, in a culture shaped by utilitarianism such as ours, when Christians insist that human life — at any stage — is not a “waste,” we are labeled FANATICS. When we argue that “progress,” however defined, should not be purchased at the expense of the most vulnerable among us, we are made out as “enemies of the future.” It does not matter that, to date, no treatments or cures have come from embryonic stem-cell research. It's our insistence on the sanctity and dignity of the human person that offends the prophets of progress.

But that insistence is the only reliable protection against the abuses that took place in Hwang's laboratory. In a world where SOME human life is expendable for the “greater good,” there is nothing that protects the weak or, for that matter, protects any of us.

________

Sign Your Way To A “Good Death?” -- the Soft Slide To Euthanasia

Job 3:20

Charlotte Allen doesn’t want to sign a roadmap that could lead to euthanasia. That’s why she refused to sign what is now commonly known as a “living will” when she was diagnosed last year with breast cancer. Writing in Sunday’s edition of THE WASHINGTON POST, Allen recounted her experience overcoming “efforts to persuade me to sign onto the currently fashionable notion of a ‘good death.’”

During her hospitalization, Allen was frequently asked to sign a living will. The suggestions came with the implication that such a step was the responsible thing to do -- just accepting one’s own responsibility to tidy things up at the end of life. Eventually, she came to feel “ever-so-slightly harassed.”

In reality, living wills are a central fact of life and death in medical centers, nursing homes, hospices, and hospitals. Groups such as the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association push living wills and advanced directives as a way of limiting some care at the end of life. In other words, the whole point of a living will is to allow medical personnel not to resuscitate or to deny “artificial” food, water, and breathing assistance.

In the course of her hospitalization and treatment, Charlotte Allen had time to consider what the living will and the concept of a “good death” might really mean. She explains:

In fact, when I contemplate the concept of “dying well,” I can’t

avoid the uneasy feeling that it actually means “dying when we,

the intellectual elite, think it is appropriate for you to die.”

Consider what’s happened in recent years: The classic Hippocratic

Oath and its prohibition against physicians giving people a

“deadly drug” has collapsed with the growing acceptance of such

notions as physician-assisted suicide, the “right to die,” and

even giving some very sick, disabled or demented people a little

push over the edge, as seems to be the case in the Netherlands.

People facing end-of-life decisions may well feel subtle pressure

from the medical and bioethical establishments to make the choice

that will save the most money, as well as spare their relatives

and society at large the burden of their continued existence. A

“good death” -- that’s the English translation of the Greek word

that begins with an “e.” You know, euthanasia.

She also traced how the movement toward a “good death” has spread to places once thought safe from the temptation, such as hospices. As she reports, just a few months ago “the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine reversed its long-standing opposition to physician-assisted suicide (which is legal in Oregon and said to be quietly practiced by many doctors elsewhere) and adopted a new set of rules that effectively endorsed the practice. The academy even decided on a new euphemism for the procedure: “physician-assisted death.” Even where assisted suicide is illegal, many hospices now endorse “terminal sedation,” the ethically murky practice of anesthetizing terminal patients, then cutting off their nutrition and liquids.”

Changing “physician-assisted suicide” to “physician-assisted death” is a clever manipulation of the language, but it cannot disguise the fact that the key word to the concept is death -- assisted by a physician.

Allen concludes her article in THE WASHINGTON POST with a flourish:

I wish we lived in a different kind of society, one with agreed

ideas about what a “good death” means -- but we don’t, at least

not now. So I say: Go ahead and sign a living will if you want.

Have your doctor pull out your feeding tube or inject you with

cyanide or do whatever fulfills your idea of death with dignity.

But count me out. I don’t want to “die well”; I just want to die

in peace.

Christians understand the reality of death, but we must also affirm the gift of life. Furthermore, the Bible makes clear that we are not the masters of our own fates, nor the sovereigns of our own souls. In the end, our lives are in God’s hands. This society’s transit down a freeway to euthanasia should concern all citizens, but Christians in particular.

The idea of a self-defined “good death” has its place in the pagan cultures of antiquity, but not in the biblical culture of Christianity. Given advances in medical treatments and technologies, end of life issues can be truly vexing and excruciatingly difficult -- even for those who attempt to think ahead. Be sure you know what you are signing when someone presents you with a form for a living will. Are you sure that it is truly consistent with your Christian beliefs? Are you sure that those reading the document will understand -- and follow -- what you sign?

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #22913]

Listening To the Transhumanists

Frustration with the human condition has led many mortals astray. Indeed, the primal temptation that came to Adam and Eve in the garden was, in essence, to escape their own creaturely finitude and grasp after knowledge that had been forbidden them. Thus, by eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve effectively redefined humanity, now “knowing the difference between good and evil.”

Efforts to transcend the natural limits of human life and experience are regular features of ancient mythologies and modern literature. Strangely enough, ideas and proposals once limited to the world of science fiction are now taken seriously in some scientific circles.

If you demand evidence for that assertion, just consider the “Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights” conference, held May 26-28, 2006, at the Stanford Law School.

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and Special Consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture, attended the sessions and has offered this summary analysis: “If you want to know what it feels like to wander into a Salvador Dali painting, try attending a conference of transhumanists.”

Smith offers a rather comprehensive report on the conference in “The Catman Cometh – Among the Transhumanists,” published in the June 26, 2006 edition of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. As he explains, “Transhumanism is a radical movement emanating from the universities that seeks to enhance human capacities via technology. The ultimate goal is a utopian world of 'post-humans,' such as human/robot hybrids and human consciousness downloaded into computers that will live for thousands of years.”

Consider some of the ideas that were floating around at the conference. Smith cites James Hughes, a professor of health policy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, who argues that human beings must eradicate “human racism,” defined as the belief that humans should be accorded a special moral status just because they are human. Hughes is the author of CITIZEN CYBORG, a book that offers his vision of a transhumanist future. He argues that we must replace the notion of humanity with the concept of “personhood.” As Smith explains, “Under personhood theory, some humans would be excluded, but all self-aware entities – whether human, post-human, machine, chimera, or robot – would qualify for the rights, privileges, and protections of citizenship.”

Smith also reports that Nick Bostrom, cofounder of the World Transhumanists Association, is seeking to maintain some sense of “post-human dignity,” but he also denies that this dignity can be “based on substrata.” In other words, it should not matter whether a “being” is biological, or merely mechanical.

The conference also featured an ideological array including feminists like Annalee Newitz, who called for a transhumanist future in which female biology would be fixed, allowing women “better control over female evolution.” Women should not have to rely upon males for “genetic material” in the making of babies. Newitz, a contributing editor at WIRED magazine, also argues that men should be surgically altered so that they can become biological mothers.

As Newitz states in the conference brochure, “For thousands of years, women have been subjected to a genetic engineering program known as patriarchy – from an evolutionary perspective, patriarchy is a system in which men choose mates for women, and it has affected the culture and genetic make up of countless generations. Today many of us live in post-patriarchal societies with fairly advanced reproductive technology. Can we use this technology in the service of a feminist genetic engineering project? I argue that we can.”

Human enhancement is the goal of many, if not all, of the participants. At times, the notion of “enhancement” takes on twisted forms. Susan Stryker, identified as “an internationally recognized independent scholar and filmmaker whose historical research and theoretical writings have helped shape the field of transgender studies,” joined with Nikki Sullivan of Macquarie University in Australia to present a paper entitled “King's Body, Queen's Member: State Sovereignty, Transsexual Surgery, and Self-Demand Amputation.”

As the conference program summarized their session: “we demonstrate how a discourse of bodily integrity has been deployed both for and against transsexual surgery and self-demand amputation at various historical moments and in differing social contexts. Drawing on Hobbes' theory of sovereignty in LEVIATHAN, as well as Foucault's critique of centralized state authority, we argue that 'integrity' is not predicated on notions of natural, biologic, organic unity, but rather on the availability of the body as a source of biopower into the State's projects. We thus arrive at a radically antihumanist understanding of political struggles that structure the occupation of one's own embodied space, and which ultimately determine whether the body is available as a resource for subjective needs as well as state functions.”

Now you are a brave reader if you have attempted to unpack those last few sentences. Suffice it to say that Stryker and Sullivan are arguing that society treats human bodies as mere sources of “biopower” for the state's purposes. Using a radical cultural analysis, they then argue that persons ought to be able to demand radical surgery on their bodies, even to the point of amputating healthy limbs, so they can meet their own subjective needs and no longer serve as “biopower” for the state. Got it?

Aubrey De Grey, biogerontologist at the University of Cambridge sought to redefine the right to life. “Humanity has long demonstrated a paradoxical ambivalence concerning the extension of healthy human lifespan,” he said in his catalog statement. “Modest health extension has been universally sought, whereas extreme (even indefinite) health extension has been regarded as a snare and delusion -- a dream beyond all others at first blush, but actually something we are better off without.” Aubrey De Grey is not satisfied with that conclusion. Indeed, he calls for “curing aging” in order to expand the human lifespan without limit. He argues that humans “have a right to live as long as they wish to.” Thus, “Once we realize this, our determination to consign human aging to history will be second only to our shame that we took so long to break out of our collective trance.”

In other words, death is an evolutionary accident that should be eradicated by intentional intervention and biomedical advances. But, at least Aubrey De Grey was talking about humans. George Devorsky, on the other hand, argues that human beings must now biologically “uplift” non-human animals. As he explains, “As the potential for enhancement technologies migrates from the theoretical to the practical, a difficult and important decision will be imposed upon human civilization, namely the issue as to whether or not we are morally obligated to biologically enhance non-human animals and bring them along with us into advanced postbiological existence. There will be no middle road that we can take; humanity will either have to leave animals in their current state of nature or bring as many sentient creatures along into a posthuman future. A strong case can be made that life and civilizations on Earth have already been following this general tendency and that animal uplift will be a logical and reasonable developmental stage along this continuum of progress.”

So, even as the transhumanists want to transcend the limits of human existence, some also demand that the same “uplift” be extended to the animal kingdom as well. Why limit transhumanism to humans? Indeed, the other “beings” of concern at the conference were mechanical beings like robots. As Nick Bostram, a philosopher at Oxford University, argued, “we need to expand our concept of dignity to encompass posthuman dignity as well as human dignity. If human dignity is the grounding for human rights, this move directly leads us to consider the question of posthuman rights. I will address the issue of such rights in the context of the creation of artificial minds ... and discuss some tentative ethical principles for defining our rights and responsibilities relative to our hypothetical future machine progeny, and their rights and responsibilities relative to their creators.”

No kidding. These scientists, theorists, and philosophers, teaching at some of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world, were seriously considering granting recognition of human dignity to machines and robots. Even the language in the making of such proposals appears ludicrous on its face. What does it mean to speak of “hypothetical future machine progeny?” Beyond that, how can we speak of robots having “rights and responsibilities relative to their creators?” Once again, science fiction is treated as the coming reality. Is it?

As Wesley J. Smith argues, “We shouldn't take all this too seriously, of course. Transhumanism is mostly an intellectual game, a fantasy. The technological breakthroughs necessary to create a true post-humanity will almost surely never come.” So, should we worry?

“But this doesn't mean that transhumanism is benign – far from it,” Smith advises. “Dismissing the intrinsic value of human life is always dangerous, and presuming to determine which human traits are desirable and which not leads to very dark places.”

As Smith rightly reminds, a “new eugenics” has already arrived, with the abortion of the vast majority of babies diagnosed with Down's Syndrome and with the genetic screening of human embryos now urged upon us.

Furthermore, Smith notes that the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce have called for spending billions of dollars pursuing the very technologies that the transhumanists envision. The National Institutes of Health granted $773,000 to Case Law School in order to determine the advisability of “ethically acceptable rules” concerning the use of genetic technologies for human enhancement.

The rise of the transhumanist movement is just one symptom of a primal sin that has affected humanity from Adam onward. Dissatisfied with the limits of our human condition, there is the natural impulse to exceed those limitations. Thus, entire industries have been developed, intended to offer the promise of a longer life, a better life, a different life, and the eclipse of human boundaries.

Yet human dignity rests upon a clear and unambiguous affirmation that we are, after all, creatures uniquely made in God's image. The very fact that we are creatures reminds us of the fact that our Creator has the right to define and to determine what it means to be human. The problem with transhumanism is not merely in the details, or even in the likelihood that many of these technologies will never see the light of day. Indeed, the real problem is that the very urge and desire to eclipse human limitations is an act of defiance grounded in profound ingratitude. At the core of transhumanism is a basic hatred of humanity. The true humanists are those who accept with gratitude the gift of true humanity.

Choosing Life Is the Right Choice

Luke 7:22

Take a good look at Jacob Barker Hall. Whether in person or by photo it’s hard not to see his bright eyes and engaging smile and not know the joy and the zest that define this 9-year-old’s life. His speech and his physical awkwardness give glimpses of his Down Syndrome, but any signs of motor or mental difficulty are overshadowed by the special person he is as a child of God.

Jacob is a great name for my youngest son. Roughly translated into “supplanter,” a more practical definition for his personality would be “steals the show,” but not in a bad way. He showers others with love and encouragement, likely to say “good job” loudly to the choir or the pastor (along with a visible “thumbs up”) -- without concern for when he says it during the service (I finally figured out it’s his way of saying “amen”).

He runs to give hugs to old and young alike, but he especially delights in carefully approaching a baby, gently cupping his hands along the child’s jawline and slowly, tenderly stroking forward until the heels of his palms meet at the baby’s chin.

His affection is authentic and so are his prayers, and he’s likely to pray anytime, anywhere.

One of the most memorable times was during his first trip to see someone at a hospital, an older lady from church. He was six, and not sure about where he was, or what “ministry” meant or “hospital visitation.” But as soon as he saw his “friend” lying in bed, he grabbed her hand and everyone else joined the circle. Jacob has delayed speech, and no one could discern the jumbled words he was trying to say ... yet everyone understood his prayer.

Jacob is not just a spiritual warrior but he’s also a hero.

I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to understand, but I hope one day to tell him how he saved two lives.

Twice while we lived in Annapolis, Maryland, a Christian nurse referred a mother expecting a Down Syndrome baby to visit with my wife and me. One mother, along with her husband, had decided to have an abortion. The other mother said she and her husband were undecided, but considering it.

Both mothers’ visits were remarkably similar, initially with the awkwardness of a cold call sales visit. The conversation was open but perfunctory ... until ... the moment each held Jacob in their arms. He was just out of the neonatal intensive care unit (a miracle I’ll save to write about in another column). Both just held him ... then they cuddled him ... and they sobbed.

Though both visited on separate occasions, their words were the same.

“I was expecting a monster.”

“They told me about ... physical disabilities ... financial burdens ... unfair to my other children ... strain on my marriage ...”

Their respective medical teams made it seem that they were telling them these things for the mothers’ “best interests.”

These health care professionals even seemed to express concern for the babies. After all, they reasoned, what quality of life could such a child expect?

What logic: “No life” is better than a (dire prediction of) “less than perfect quality of life.”

That logic is what contributed to an extraordinary death rate the year Jacob was born. In 1997, between 91 and 93 percent of mothers of an unborn child diagnosed with Down Syndrome chose abortion; there were about 3,500 live births of Down Syndrome children, so between 39,000 and 50,000 were killed.

The pressure tactics these mothers had experienced were all too familiar for my wife, Catherine, and me, as we had been advised about the same negative quality of life factors as well.

The height of insult for us came during an appointment with her military doctor. I was a naval aviator and junior in rank to him.

Well into the pregnancy, he advised “us” to have an amniocentesis. We knew there was a risk to the baby and asked if the procedure would help him know how to treat the baby. When he said no, he added that he just wanted to make sure we had all the information we needed to make “an informed choice.”

For context, it’s important to know that we had not asked about abortion or even considered it.

Catherine was 38 years old and the AFP test and sonograms had indicated a high probability that Jacob had Down Syndrome. And we were clear that we were making every preparation to welcome this baby into our lives.

I’m analytical, but Catherine is an information-gathering machine. She filled journals with answers to the many questions she asked at every appointment, always trying to be better informed on how to take care of a special needs child.

Moreover, our faith in God was a known quantity.

The moments that followed the doctor’s statement seem surreal now. I reddened as my neck muscles tensed and my forearms tightened. Catherine was on my arm and must have sensed my anger building. She tenderly but firmly squeezed my elbow and with calm strength said, “That choice has already been made.”

What a great wife and woman of God!

When over 9 out of 10 women, Christian and not, were doing otherwise, my wife chose life.

Of course, I knew that was her choice from the beginning. I was amazed as I watched her commit herself to preparing to be the best mom she could be for a baby with the odds stacked against him.

But what a confirmation her statement was to me.

And what a difference that choice has made in our lives. It also made a difference in the lives of the two mothers.

After hugging Jacob, both mothers looked like the weight of the world had been lifted. They laughed and jostled him ... and both cried with relief as he loved on them. And each woman, during their respective visits, chose life for their unborn.

Don’t get me wrong, it has not been a bed of roses. And we didn’t sugar coat what we knew then.

You can Google “Down Syndrome” and get an idea of the medical issues, learning challenges, physical concerns, added training and therapies, extra time, energy and expenses ...

But, I don’t want to belabor these points, especially in view of how God has so generously supplied every need.

However, I do need to mention that Catherine picks up the biggest portion of the extra workload for Jacob. I don’t tell her enough what a hero she was and is -- she is an incredible mom and wife and servant of God -- but I’m trying to improve.

I also need to share one more anecdote about Jacob. I’m sure it will bless someone, because it reveals so much about who he is.

Jacob had heart surgery 2 years ago.

We were with him in the prep area, just loving on him, with friends who were cycling in from the waiting room, when the nurses came to wheel him away. He was already medicated to ease him into sleep. Slurring his words, which were not very clear to start with, he began singing a song his next older brother, Nathan, had taught him.

“Lord you are more precious than silver.

“Lord you are more costly than gold.

“Lord you are more beautiful than diamonds.

“And nothing I desire compares with you.”

He didn’t understand everything that was going on, but he knew something, from the surroundings and the large number of folks who were there to be with him, about the seriousness of what was happening.

He was drifting fast into slumber, going into a situation that he didn’t understand, except he knew our concern; and singing praise to God was what was on his heart.

I really hope one day he is able to understand, so I can tell him the hero he is.

I’ve thought it through a couple of times. Each instance I’ve imagined the serious look he’ll give as I share the details of how the love he showed to two mothers saved the lives of their babies. Then I see a broad smile stretching from cheek to cheek when I give him two thumbs in the air and say “good job.”

Choosing life was the right choice.

More importantly, choosing life is the right choice.

________

Will Hall is the executive editor of Baptist Press.

Why Liberals Should Fear Stem-Cell Research

Mark 9:37

Most people do not understand what the stem-cell debate is really about. It is not an argument about when life begins, for it is a simple and uncontroversial biological fact that a human life begins when an embryo is created. The real question is a profoundly ethical one: Is a microscopic proto-human, with no self-awareness and no resemblance to us, morally equal to walking, talking human beings?

For much of human history, it was a brutal fact that people were NOT created equal; the wealthy and the strong dominated the weak with no qualms, assuming that this was the natural order of things. But in the Declaration of Independence, our country’s Founders asserted a revolutionary idea -- that the youngest and the oldest, the weakest and the strongest, all of us, simply by virtue of our common humanity, are in some basic and inalienable way equals.

This essentially liberal proposition is now being challenged by biotechnology, aided and abetted by our natural impulse to help the sick. But if we exploit and kill human embryos for humanitarian ends, we will have decided that some lives are worth more than others. Making that choice will require us to sacrifice our highest ideals.

Battle Strategies: How To Win the Culture War

Anybody familiar with my writings knows that I am passionate about teaching people to see Christianity as a worldview, an explanation of all of life. As Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper put it, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ ... does not cry: ‘Mine!’” That includes politics.

Over the years our Wilberforce Forum has devoted much time to teaching biblical worldview to members of Congress. Through our Capitol Hill lecture series, congressmen hear some of the best Christian minds in the country discussing everything from stem-cell research to economics to business ethics. This teaching pays off richly, as I recently discovered while having coffee with one congressman.

This Christian lawmaker has been profoundly influenced by our teaching. During the Terri Schiavo episode, he championed the cause of keeping Terri alive, drawing much heat in his congressional district.

One day a medical school in his home state invited this congressman to defend his position. The crowd was so hostile that he decided to forego his speech and simply answer questions — a smart tactic.

The congressman allowed the opposition to “vent” about the government “interfering” with medical decisions. And then he responded by saying, “Let me straighten one thing out. Terri Schiavo was not on life support. What was done in her case was simply to remove a feeding tube. Whatever state she was in, she was simply being fed.” He then asked if anyone questioned that. No one did.

The congressman then drew on arguments he had heard from Princeton professor Robert George and University of Texas professor J. Budziszewski, both speakers in our lecture series. He told the angry crowd that nearby there was a nursing home for people who could not feed themselves; for various reasons two hundred people had to be spoon-fed. The congressman then asked if the audience would object if the nursing home decided to stop feeding them. Should the government step in and force it to feed the patients? Absolute silence: Not a single person spoke.

The congressman’s arguments got around, and much of the opposition to his position was diffused.

I was thrilled to hear this story because it is a good example of how a Christian worldview, when understood and argued winsomely, can change the debate. You and I must learn how to do this, because the issues are not going to go away. A few weeks ago, a Colorado woman named Christa Lilly woke up after being in a coma for six years. This case, and others like it, indicates that people who appear to be in a persistent, vegetative state may not be.

There is huge pressure from health-care providers to simply euthanize people like Christa and Terri Schiavo — people whose care is costly. Christians must learn to make rational and accessible arguments that all life must be respected.

Samuel Huntington, a professor at Harvard, has said that the world is divided not so much by geographical boundaries as by differences in ultimate beliefs — in worldviews. He is absolutely right. The task for us is to identify those worldviews and to winsomely demonstrate that the Christian worldview, supported by reason and evidence, is the only one that can be rationally sustained.

________

The War On 'Defective' Children: Genetic Selection

In the 1998 film GATTACA, the hero says that he will never know what possessed his mother to put her faith in God instead of a geneticist.

That’s because, in this science-fiction film, he lives in a world where prospective parents can screen their would-be children for “defects” before they are implanted in the womb. In this world, “defects” aren’t limited to life-threatening conditions; they also include things like near-sightedness.

In the world of GATTACA, people who weren’t screened before birth form a permanent underclass called “in-valids.”

Since the film’s release, the biotech industry and their paid shills have insisted that GATTACA is fiction and that nothing like that could happen in real life. Well, something like it just did.

In May, Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority authorized a London clinic to screen for a condition called “squint.”

Squint causes the affected eye to look inwards or outwards instead of straight ahead. Squint can be treated various ways: eyeglasses, temporary patches, eye drops and, in the most severe cases, surgery.

The Authority’s ruling was in response to a businessman who has this condition and his wife, who “[wanted] to ensure they do not have a severely cross-eyed child.”

The clinic will employ a technique known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Previously, PGD had been limited to cases involving “life-shortening conditions such as cystic fibrosis and fatal blood disorders.” Then the uses of PGD began to expand. Doctors have used it to screen for genetic evidence of possible adult diseases like cancer and early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Now, they’re using it for cosmetic imperfections. As David King of Human Genetics Alert said: “We moved from preventing children who will die young to those who might become ill in middle age. And now we discard those who will live as long as the rest of us but are cosmetically imperfect.”

The man who will perform the test agrees. Gedis Grudzinskas predicts that the use of embryo screening for “severe cosmetic defects” will increase because of the ruling. By “severe” he means anything that might cause a family “severe distress,” like the wrong hair color, which could lead to “bullying” and “even suicide.”

Anybody who is surprised by this story simply hasn’t been paying attention. As I’ve previously told BreakPoint listeners, genetic testing has turned people with Down syndrome into an endangered species. Actually, they might survive if they weren’t human: If they were wolves or ferrets, someone might actually care that they were being eliminated.

If we’re willing to do this to children who can be seen on a sonogram, why would you think that we wouldn’t target people who can’t be? Especially when you factor in the cost of treating the conditions being tested for.

As David King said, “philosophers love to deride the idea of a slippery slope.” But then we look around us and we are ten feet further down the hill than the last time we looked. The only question is now: Are we ready to put real limits on the uses of genetic testing?

Look around us today, and the world looks a lot like it did in that movie GATTACA. Frightening at the time — and frightening today.

________

Amazing Awakenings -- Will the Nation's Conscience Be Awakened Too?

As Wesley J. Smith explains, “the reigning cultural paradigm” holds that “a life with profound cognitive dysfunction is not worth living.” The dominant assessment is that a person with a diagnosis of permanent unconsciousness should be allowed to die by withdrawal of food and hydration.

But, as Smith reports in The Weekly Standard, this “reigning cultural paradigm” is colliding with medical reality.

Consider this case:

On October 19, only months after being nearly dehydrated to death

when his feeding tube was removed, Jesse Ramirez walked out of

the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix on his own two legs.

Ramirez is lucky to be alive. Early last June, a mere one week

after a serious auto accident left him unconscious, his wife

Rebecca and doctors decided he would never recover and pulled his

feeding tube. He went without food and water for five long days.

But then his mother, Theresa, represented by lawyers from the

Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, successfully took Rebecca to

court demanding a change of guardianship on the grounds that

Rebecca and Jesse’s allegedly rocky marriage disqualified her for

the role.

The case of Jesse Ramirez should shock Americans into understanding that those diagnosed as profoundly cognitively impaired -- and thus considered candidates for death by starvation and dehydration -- sometimes recover.

Ramirez is not alone. Consider the case of 12-year-old Haleigh Poutre:

Haleigh barely survived terrible child abuse and then was nearly

done in by the very people charged with protecting her. Only

eight days after she was hospitalized in the wake of a beating,

the Massachusetts Department of Public Social Services, acting on

doctors’ solemn assurances that she was “virtually brain dead,”

requested permission to remove her respirator and feeding tube.

This request was approved by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

But the doctors, social workers, and judges were wrong about

Haleigh’s prospects. Just before her life support was withdrawn,

she began to exhibit signs of awareness -- she picked up a

stuffed duck when requested -- leading to a last-minute reprieve.

Today, while Haleigh’s exact condition is not public information,

reports in the media indicate she is awake and aware and able to

eat some foods.

Add to these reports what THE WASHINGTON POST reported on September 8, 2006:

Without any hint that she might have a sense of what was

happening, the researchers put the woman in a scanner that

detects brain activity and told her that in a few minutes they

would say the word “tennis,” signaling her to imagine she was

serving, volleying and chasing down balls. When they did, the

neurologists were shocked to see her brain “light up” exactly as

an uninjured person’s would. It happened again and again. And

the doctors got the same result when they repeatedly cued her to

picture herself wandering, room to room, through her own home.

That’s right -- a woman thought to be without conscious function was found by researchers to be playing tennis in her brain, stimulated by a person saying the word in her presence. She was able to hear and understand the word, and to imagine herself playing the game.

Ironically, Smith reports that researchers have found that the drug Ambien -- usually prescribed to assist a person to sleep -- has been found to assist some patients to recover brain activity and consciousness.

Smith is profoundly correct in pointing back to the tragedy of Terri Schiavo and suggesting that the nation should have a guilty conscience.

He concludes:

A serious cultural consequence of the Terri Schiavo drama has

been the devaluation of the weakest among us into a disposable

and exploitable caste. But it is not too late to reverse the

tide. Jesse Ramirez, Haleigh Poutre, and the groundbreaking

research into the treatment of serious brain injury are powerful

reminders that where there is life, there is hope. Those who

understand that all persons, regardless of capacity, deserve to

be treated as beloved members of the human family have good

reason to shake off the Schiavo rout and return to the fray.

Where there is life, there is hope. That is a helpful formula for ethical decision-making in these cases. The fact that Jesse Ramirez is recovering, Haleigh Poutre is alive, and a patient was found to be playing tennis in her head should be enough to shock this nation and to awaken its conscience. If not, what will it take?

You Can't Fool Mother Nature: Everything Conceivable

Note: The following commentary contains sensitive information and may not be suitable for children.

If you haven’t thought much lately about just how rapidly the very nature of the family is changing, consider this: It is now possible for a child to have five parents. That includes egg donor, sperm donor, surrogate mother, and the mother and father who raise him. It is not only possible, but for some children, it is a fact of life.

Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy explains this and much more in her book Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Men, Women, and the World. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough, especially for would-be parents who may face difficult decisions about childbearing in the near future.

Mundy is not writing from a Christian viewpoint or even from a pro-life viewpoint, but she covers the murky field of reproductive technology, and its effects on families, thoroughly and unflinchingly. And she takes seriously the ethical dilemmas that arise in a largely unregulated field where technology is changing rapidly — while most of those involved are still trying to figure out the moral implications.

Unlike the well-worn abortion debate, Mundy points out, she is describing a situation where parents desperately want children — and yet the very depth of that longing, when combined with the latest scientific advancements, can, as I have mentioned before on “BreakPoint,” turn children into commodities.

The situations Mundy describes are startling. She writes about children who think of an unseen sperm donor as “Daddy” and long to find out if they look like him. She describes women who want children so badly that they will let an unscrupulous doctor transfer an excessive number of embryos to their wombs. And she witnesses “selective reduction” procedures where those mothers watch on a screen as one or two of their multiple fetuses are killed before their very eyes.

While sympathetic to the people she talks with, Mundy cannot help but notice the inherent problems. She acknowledges the irony of parents trying to select egg donors and sperm donors with the best looks and the highest intelligence — qualities they want passed down to their children — for the express purpose of building a family not based on genetic relationships. “Every day,” she writes, “families are formed by parents trying to hold in their head the competing notions that genes, while important, aren’t” important.

Mundy also sees how the emphasis on parents’ rights can wreak havoc on the lives of children — to the point where she even hears some members of Planned Parenthood, of all people, uneasily wondering if they ought to start focusing more on children’s rights.

The biggest irony of all, of course, is that a biblical worldview teaches us that there is no escaping the Creator’s design for our lives and our families. Even those families doing their best to be different — homosexual couples, mothers who deliberately decide to exclude fathers, or couples trying to create “designer babies” — often end up trying to create a family as “traditional” and normal as possible.

Make no mistake: The desire for giving life is stamped on our souls by the Giver of life Himself — in whose image we are made. But as the book Everything Conceivable makes clear, when we try to remake things in our own image and on our own terms, we do a tragically poor job of it, no matter how sophisticated the technology.

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Deadly Trend: the Infanticide Protocol

Job 3:20

Sociologist Stefan Timmerman has observed that “Humans in every society studied to date are more likely to be murdered on the day they are born than on any other day of their lives.” Timmerman was quoted recently by bioethicist Wesley J. Smith in the online publication TO THE SOURCE.

Smith rightly claims that while infanticide was commonly accepted in ancient times, only the Jews and the Christians actively opposed it. The strength of their opposition paid off “when infanticide was outlawed by Emperor Valentinian, a Christian, in the 4th century.”

So, as Western culture abandons its Christian roots, we ought not to be surprised that infanticide is making a comeback.

Take a look at what is already happening in the Netherlands. In 2004, doctors from Groningen University Medical Center admitted to killing, or “euthanizing,” to use the euphemism, dying or profoundly disabled babies. That practice came to be known as the Groningen Protocol.

Under those guidelines, not only are dying infants killed, but so are disabled infants who do not even require intensive care. The criteria for euthanizing a baby are subjective: Either the baby is judged to have no chance of survival; may survive after intensive treatment but with a grim future; or endures “suffering [that] is severe, sustained, and cannot be alleviated.” These criteria depend on the doctor’s whim.

So much for the Hippocratic Oath.

By judging which life is valuable or not, doctors are doing precisely what the Nazis did over 60 years ago. The Nazis even had a phrase for this, which translated means “life not worth living” — and not because of the individuals’ suffering, but because of their burden and cost to society.

“As the West loses some of its Biblical moral footing,” writes Smith, “there is a new effort to decriminalize infanticide.” In fact, he asserts, “the notion is ‘positively trendy’.” Most notably, of course, is Princeton Professor Peter Singer who has advocated for some time killing disabled infants. But he is not the only one. When the Groningen Protocol was revealed, others began — not condemning it — but, sadly enough, defending it.

Smith noted a New York Times feature and a New England Journal of Medicine report, both giving credence and sympathy to Dutch infanticide proponents. And now the Hastings Center Report, the most respected journal on bioethics, has published another pro-Groningen Protocol article in which the authors not only “support lethally injecting dying babies, but also those who are disabled.”

“The article assumes that guidelines will protect against abuse,” writes Smith, but, as he points out, “infanticide is by definition abuse.” And, as Smith reminds readers, Dutch euthanasia guidelines for adults and teens have been “violated for decades,” so why should we expect anything different with infanticide guidelines?

“[W]e are moving toward a medical system,” says Smith, “in which babies are put down like dogs and killing is redefined as a caring act.”

But this can happen only in a society that has forgotten that every human life is made in the image of God — and, therefore, worthy of protection.

Think worldviews do not matter? Think our Christian heritage is irrelevant? Too bad we cannot ask the infants of Groningen what they think.

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