Posted on 12/04/2002 8:39:24 AM PST by A2J
It's only a small, indeed microscopic, matter, but it made the news. It seems the Bush administration has changed the federal regulations governing scientific research in order to class human embryos as human.
Goodness, has somebody in Washington been reading a biology textbook? What did they think the human embryo was before -- feline? equine? crustacean? Or just a meaningless clump of cells in a petri dish?
This new addition to the list of "human subjects" whose welfare must be considered in scientific experiments -- along with fetus, child and adult -- is not expected to have any dramatic effect on society's ethics. American society in 2002 being American society in 2002, what would?
But it's assuring to see the scientifically obvious recognized. So many of the terms used to describe the embryo in its earliest stages -- blastocyst, zygote, fertilized ovum -- seem designed to dehumanize it. No wonder some innocents are shocked to realize the human embryo might be, goodness, human.
After all, here is human life no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence, as those given to dismissing its importance like to say. Every time they do, they only increase my awe in the presence of such a miracle: Imagine that this minuscule being has all the genetic components, and even more miraculous, the encoded inner knowledge, to become an adult -- to be born, to do noble or terrible things, to know love and joy and anger and hate, to die and yet leave an immortal legacy. What a piece of work is man!
We were all that smaller-than-a-period size once -- you, me and even a distinguished scientist like Robert R. Reich, executive associate dean of research at Emory University's school of medicine in Atlanta, the very embodiment of the depersonalized New South.
Dr. Reich doesn't sound too happy at the official recognition now being granted our (and his) smallest personal stage, the embryo.
It seems the good doctor was on an advisory committee appointed during the Clinton administration to look into the ethics of research on humans. (It seems there was an unfortunate, if highly predictable, series of scandals in that fast-developing field.) But the doc was left off the committee when the Bush administration reorganized it with an eye to broadening its scope.
"I'm very concerned," says Dr. Reich, "that this addition (of the embryo to the list of human subjects) will serve to seriously politicize the reconstituted committee."
Dr. Reich doesn't seem to realize that not recognizing the human embryo as human was just as political a decision. And at least as serious.
It's as though, when the doc talks politics, we're supposed to believe he's talking only science. And if he's denying that human embryos are human, it's mighty poor science.
But, no, surely Dr. Reich understands that the human embryo is still human -- just as human as those at the other end of life's cycle. For example, the debilitated old woman with Alzheimer's talking to imaginary friends from her nursing-home bed.
Neither of these examples of human life might be considered very human by those eager to experiment on them, or just to toss them out with the other refuse.
Perhaps what Dr. Reich means when he objects to including embryos in the range of human subjects is that they don't belong to a stage of human life worth protecting. And that their welfare need not be considered if they could be used for scientific research.
In time the same exception will surely be proposed for the aged, the comatose, the disabled. It will be argued that they are not fully human, either. So do the needs of research trump our common humanity.
The Germans of the last century had a term for the kind of human subject that need not be protected by law or ethics. It was lebensunwertes Leben. Life unworthy of life. And those classified as such were considered fit for scientific research. This classification only began with the mentally retarded. Later it would be expanded to include not just the physically disabled but the racially, politically and just personally offensive.
Once you accept the concept of lebensunwertes Leben, or human but not worthy of the protections due human beings, there's just no end to the irritating folks you can get rid of.
Herr Dr. Reich may not be familiar with the genealogy of the idea he's expressing in his vague way, but he'd be right at home in the Germany of 1935. Just as, God help us, he is in the America of 2002.
©2002 Tribune Media Services
What a beautiful sentence.
Maybe America IS waking up - maybe this past election was not just an aberration, but the sound of a prize fighter getting up off of the mat, ready for the counter-attack.
Maybe we aren't down-for-the-count, that we have finally awakened to God's shout, like the train conductor's final warning.
Maybe our Mercifull Creator is giving us one last chance...let's not let it slip away.
BTW - extra prayers for our service men and women, especially now.
And what "change" are you referring to?
It appears that another liberal from DU has slimed their way to FR since 11/5.
So, in your reasoning, a person on life-support is not human, correct?
Back to the DU with you, you slimy snake.
Can a week old infant live an independent existence? If not, is it human?
As for your comment, "A human is a being that has the capability of living independently ..", should you get into a car accident on the way home tonight and become reduced to a vegetable in a coma- does your logic lead to you no longer being human?
Further, when does your twisted logic take effect, by the event of birth? Do late term pregnancies not apply?
Why don't we wait until after the child is born and ask their opinion?
If not, as an outside observer, you would just let them die?
Ah, so you want to construct an artificial, rhetorical distinction between "social" and "biological" dependence. Clever.
One little problem, however. There is no such distinction. The nourishment an embryo takes in the womb is absolutely indistinguishable from what an infant takes at one week, or from what you took at lunch today.
The regimen you suggest, if taken to its logical conclusion, requires that all forms of nurturing be elimated from human behavior.
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