Sacred body? Stem cell research and human cloning

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2002 by Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

This argument also has consequences for the other ethical question that is at stake in the bio-ethical debate: What is the status of human life in its earliest beginnings?

The status of early human life

The landscape of the ethical discussion on this issue can be described in terms of five positions.

The weakest position has been publicly discussed in connection with the theses of the Australian ethicist Peter Singer, now teaching at Princeton University. This position links the full protection of life, and its personal status, to the empirical existence of certain characteristics such as sensitivity to rationality, consciousness and self-esteem. For Singer human beings deserve this protection only a few weeks after birth. The second position sees the act of birth as constitutive for the attribute of human dignity and its protection. A third position is based on the high estimation of reason and wants to protect fully human life beginning with the fifth week after fertilization, when the brain starts to develop in the embryo. A fourth position affirms the 14-day period which we have already mentioned. This is based on the fact that until the end of this period there is a possibility that the embryo will divide into twins, and therefore the individuality of the embryo is seen as beginning only after this period. (The other reason given for the 14-day period is the nidation of the embryo in the womb of the mother which takes place within this period.) Finally, the fifth and strongest position affirms that the embryo is a human being from the very beginning, and therefore also deserves full protection from the moment of fertilization of the egg cell on. This position is not only affirmed in many church statements. It has also entered legal codices such as the German embryo protection law.

This fifth position might trouble women who are involved in the discussion on the issue of abortion, and are rightly suspicious of any ethical views which ignore the conflicts faced by women in this question. And, indeed, the bio-ethics discussion touches many questions which are also discussed in dealing with the issue of abortion. Nevertheless, there are also clear differences. While in the issue of abortion issue we are dealing with a conflict within the body of a woman, in the biotechnology debate we are talking about methods which objectify human life and therefore pose the danger of leaving such human life without any protection. Therefore it actually makes sense to establish especially strict standards for human life in laboratories, while refusing the temptation to draw any direct conclusions for the debate on abortion.

With this proviso in mind, there are good reasons to see the fifth position as the one which is ethically most convincing. The first reason for this assessment has gained plausibility especially through the knowledge developed through genetic research in recent decades. We know today that with fertilization, all the genetic information which is the biological basis of the development of a human person is existant. Nothing is added later on, no matter whether the embryo divides into twins or not, his or her developing body exists from the beginning without limitation. Therefore it is appropriate to say: the embryo does not develop into a human being, but develops as a human being.