The Stem-Cell Slide: Be alert to the beginnings of evil - controversy over use of stem cells for research and Pres Bush's policy

National Review, Sept 3, 2001 by Michael Novak

I wish I could say that the president's speech to the nation on stem cells was as good as I had hoped. It was in many ways a wonderful speech: deeper and more philosophical than I have ever heard a president deliver, unusually balanced and fair in presenting opposing arguments, and clear in delineating both his own decision and the reasons for it. It was, in addition, heartfelt and compassionate toward all families who have members suffering from awful diseases or disabilities. I can even see how the president convinced himself, at the end, that he had found a ray of daylight through the opposing arguments, and arrived at a moral decision that seemed to him sound, and also politically defensible. During the last few months, I have heard many persons who think they are very smart lay out their arguments on this question. Not one of them did as thorough, many- sided, fair, and clear a job as President Bush did in his speech.

At the end, though, my heart sank. The president tried to maintain a position of principle, but what he ended up doing, despite his best effort, was giving away the principle. He put the Full Faith and Credit of the U.S. government behind the principle of using human beings as a means, albeit for noble ends. He offered a reason for doing this: The stem cells for whose use in experimentation he commits federal resources come from embryos already destroyed. Why not bring good out of evil, he argues, by now using these stem cells, which will otherwise be wasted, to search for cures for awful diseases? The outcome is not certain, but at least it's noble to try. This is a lovely and tempting thought. The problem is that when this source of stem cells runs out- soon-then those on the other side will demand more stem cells from more embryos. The demand for usable stem cells will swell enormously. This is particularly true if good experimental results are obtained. But it will even be true if they aren't: Look, partisans will say, you were too stingy, too narrow. You have ceded the principle, so now give up more of the specifics. The glittering utopia of science beckons just ahead.

Be alert to the beginnings of evil. It never comes under the appearance of evil, but always under the appearance of the beautiful, the promising, the idealistic, the pleasant. "Stop it in its beginnings," the ancient principle runs: the sooner, the easier.

Politically, the decision may play very well among a substantial majority. It is already clear that those on the left who you hope will attack it are attacking it, which will only reinforce those among right-to-lifers who accept the president's obvious good will, often deeply moving words, clearly articulated argument, and patent depth of feeling. But I deeply fear the immense battles that lie ahead, and the gathering of heartened foes, who will very quickly sniff out the weak point and pry its own inner logic with all their force. It will take almost superhuman strength now for the president to hold the new position he has moved into, having surrendered the strongest ground.

That ground was a philosophical one, not a theological one, a ground born of reason rather than of faith. One of its classic articulators was Immanuel Kant. The president himself alluded to it in his speech, in the line about not using human beings as means for even the noblest of ends. You must never use a human being as a means, only as an end. To use stem cells obtained by killing living human beings in their embryonic stage is still using them as a means. It is not enough to say that the wicked deed has already been done-that the embryos have already been killed. The purpose of that killing was to obtain the stem cells. One ought not to implicate oneself in that process, not even for the noblest and most beautiful ends.

One especially ought not to implicate the United States, which Hannah Arendt once called humankind's noblest experiment. For this nation began its embryonic existence by declaring that it held to a fundamental truth about a right to life endowed in us by our Creator. The whole world depends on our upholding that principle.

We human beings very easily reason ourselves into taking positions that end up having the most tragic of consequences, positions of which we would never have approved had we seen those consequences at the time. For the fruit of the tree of knowledge over yonder appears to be very sweet, and we feel sure that if we eat of it, then happy endings (fit for a god) will result. Those endings have always turned to sulphur in our cheeks.

The fatal mistake often comes as a result of unexamined moral sentiments: affects and feelings that serve as moral guideposts without submitting to interrogation by reason. "I feel comfortable with that," President Bush-like President Clinton, indeed like just about everybody else in this fair land-is wont to say. It is as if Americans were ashamed to say that they reached a considered intellectual judgment, independently of their feelings. "I feel comfortable with that" seems itself to be more comfortable than "That's what I've reasoned to."