What's That Thing in the Petri Dish?

There are two great threats to our society, one without (resurgent Islamic fundamentalism), and one within--the disregard for the dignity of every human life. We are in denial about both threats.

Many of the best-educated among us are leading the charge for making unethical use of scientific advances. Michael S. Gazzaniga, a Dartmouth professor and member of President Bush's bioethics council, wrote an op-ed about cloning ("All Clones Are Not the Same") that purports to demolish President Bush's stand against human cloning "in all its forms." Here is part of what he writes:

"Yet all modern research reveals that DNA must undergo thousands if not millions of interactions at both the molecular and experiential level to grow and develop a brain and become a person. It is the journey that makes a human, not the car. Unfortunately, the president rejected the advice of his own counselors and has kept his ban on federal financing of stem cell research for all but a handful of strains of existing lines. ...

"In his State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to observe that 'human life is a gift from our creator—and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.' Putting aside the belief in a 'creator,' the vast majority of the world's population takes a similar stance on valuing human life. What is at issue, rather, is how we are to define 'human life.' Look around you. Look at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else?

"Most humans practice a kind of dualism, seeing a distinction between mind and body. We all automatically confer a higher order to a developed biological entity like a human brain. We do not see cells, simple or complex—we see people, human life. That thing in a petri dish is something else. It doesn't yet have the memories and loves and hopes that accumulate over the years. Until this is understood by our politicians, the gallant efforts of so many biomedical scientists, as good as they are, will remain only stopgap measures."

This is a sickening definition of a human being. If you don't "yet" have memories and loves and hopes, are you somehow less than human? If you fall sick and forget some of your memories, are you somehow less human? Defining us this way is utilitarian, and ultimately, the use to which a clone may be put is more important than anything else.

In a piece titled "That Thing in the Petri Dish," on National Review Online, Gilbert Meilaender and Robert P. George show why this Gazzaniga's analysis is so shallow:

"It will not do to opine that a living human embryo of the sort all of us once were (which Gazzaniga prefers to characterize as 'that thing in a petri dish') cannot be a member of our community, entitled to the same protections as the rest of us, unless and until it has acquired 'the memories and loves and hopes that accumulate over the years' without offering any serious discussion of what this means for newborns, for those afflicted by retardation, and for those suffering from dementia.

"It will not do to opine that the distinction between body and brain is decisive for determining whose life should be protected without even considering whether the living and developing human body ought not elicit from us a kind of reverence and respect that would keep us from simply using it in the service of our goals, even praiseworthy goals.

"Gazzaniga is, of course, not alone in failing to engage in the kind of serious reflection we need right now (though as an informed scholar he does bear some special responsibilities that others may not). Others also want to rid our nation's debates about embryonic-stem-cell research of any so-called "political" interference with the research agendas of scientists. But this effort badly misrepresents the nature of both science and politics."