Stem Cell Research--A Brave New World Indeed

Recently, it was discovered that the Korean doctor who claimed to have cloned embryos for purposes of stem cell research actually had not cloned any embryos yet. In a not unrelated story, Judge Samuel Alito, Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, went through three days of questioning this week before the Senate Judiciary committee. I am not a fan of Bush. I do not like the direction he has been taking the country, particularly regarding health care, social security, tax cuts, and what increasingly appears to be an un-winnable war. Yet, with issues such as embryonic stem cell research, and the albatross of Roe V. Wade weighing down state and national legislatures abilities to enact reasonable curbs on the unmitigated “reproductive rights (wrongs)” prevalent today, sometimes I am glad that it is Bush, and not Kerry, making judicial appointments. Mind you, I would rather have Kerry leading the country in just about every other area, but not here.

While I would still disagree, I could understand if all that the proponents of embryonic stem cell research were asking for was the right to create stem cell lines out of left over embryos from fertility clinics that would otherwise just be thrown out. However, scientists know that, even if they used every single “spare” embryo (what happened to the days when spares dealt with bowling and tires), they would still need more for the purposes of working towards creating cures for diseases. This is why they advocate for, on top of the use of “leftovers”, the donation of eggs and sperm for the express purpose of creating embryos to use for research, and the right to begin “therapeutic” cloning to create embryos for research. What this will entail is creating life purposely to destroy it so that it can be used for other causes.

This would bring us into an entirely new era of humanity (if we could even call it “humanity” anymore). Humans have always justified killing other humans for various reasons. Other than absolute pacifists, all people have justified killing in some way or form since the beginning of civilization, whether it be self-defense, war, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, or sacrificing young women to the crop gods for a better harvest. We have all supported at least one or two of these, at the very least in certain instances (personally, I would justify killing in self defense and occassionally war). But, embryonic stem cell research brings us into a whole new world. Never before have people justified creating human life with the express intention of using the people created, killing the people created, for some other cause. We are perilously close to trying to play God. I want to see debilitating diseases such as paralysis and Alzheimer’s cured just as much as anyone, but we need to remember that the ends do not justify the means. This is an important time for us to read books such as C.S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Before we go forward with the newest “fad” cure, we need to ask, what will lose? In remembering the clichéd warning, “be careful what you wish for, you just may get it,” I fear that we will lose our humanity.