Introduction

Human Life Review, Summer 2001 by McFadden, Maria

The SUMMER oF 2001 may well be remembered as the summer of The Great Stem-Cell Debate; we have devoted a good portion of the journal to the subject that caught the country's attention and was the subject of President Bush's first major televised address to the nation on August 9th. Bush's decision that he would allow research only on existing stem-cell lines ("where the life and death decision has already been made") divided the pro-life movement: reactions ranged from the National Right to Life Committee declaring themselves "delighted" that the decision "prevented the federal government from becoming party to any further killing" of embryos, to Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, calling it a "morally unacceptable" trade-off: "for the first time in history," the federal government "will support research that relies on the destruction of defenseless human beings for the possible benefit to others."

"The point is we should never have gone down this road to begin with." This statement, by Bishop Elio Sgreccia of the Pontifical Academy for Life (quoted in our lead article), strikes us as the point indeed. The status of the embryo is not a new question; since Roe v. Wade, we have travelled so far down a deadly road that today America's highest court not only protects a woman's right to abort her baby, but also protects the right of "doctors" to perform partial-birth abortions on babies just inches away from being fullyborn. The embryonic stem-cell research debate, in some ways, brings us back full circle, to the very first moments of life. Yet there is a new, disturbing direction. Roe's purpose was to declare a "clump of cells" meaningless when compared to a woman's "freedom"; now that embryos have been declared to have enormous potential for others, the "pro-research" movement is claiming a "right" to destroy them, for the "greater good" (of larger humans).

Of course, we wouldn't have thousands of embryos to tinker with if it hadn't become possible and then acceptable not only to fertilize eggs outside of the womb, but to create and freeze "extra" embryos. In vitro fertilization is now commonplace, and it's nobody's business but the doctors, it seems, how many extra embryos are deemed necessary for a successful attempt at pregnancy. Pro-lifers are in a difficult position-we didn't want to come down this road, but we are here: what ought to become of these tiny frozen beings?

Thus the subject of Brian Caulfield's lead article: "Pregnant Pause: Where Do Frozen Embryos Belong?" Amidst the chorus of voices calling for the destruction of frozen embryos for research, there are many who think that these embryos, rather than being killed or allowed to die, ought to be adopted and given a chance at "normal life." If you watched the congressional hearings in July, you might have seen people with children who were adopted as embryos (through the California agency Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which has the "Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program"). The beautiful children are a powerful witness to the "potential" of the embryos. Yet this kind of adoption has split some of those who usually see eye-to-eye on these issues. Caulfield writes that while prolife ethicists and moral theologians agree "that life begins at fertilization and must be protected at every stage till natural death ... regulars to these [the Review's] pages find themselves on different sides of the question" of adoption. Caulfield interviewed several key prolife figures for their views, including two Catholic theologians, who draw from the same tradition to reach opposing answers.

In an interview soon after he was named by President Bush as the head of the new presidential council on bioethics, Dr. Leon Kass characterized himself as knowing the important questions, even if he was not certain of the answers. Review readers will be familiar with Dr. Kass, a medical doctor and professor at the University of Chicago, who has been raising exactly the right questions for some time: his writing on the crossroads of science and morality in the new technology has appeared several times in our pages. Kass' essays on our frightening new world of bio-technology are unparalleled in their clarity, both scientific and moral: he is an "ethicist" whose views are formed as much by his knowledge of science (he has a doctorate in biochemistry from Harvard) as by his profound belief in the dignity and value of human life, and his distrust of some of the inhuman promises of the new technologies. We had already slated the next piece by Kass (which originally appeared in The New Republic) for this issue; as it turns out, it could not be more appropriate for us to give Kass' work further exposure, for the wisdom he brings to the currently-debated issues of embryonic stem-cell research and cloning.

In his article, "Preventing a Brave New World," Kass uses the Aldous Huxley novel as a point of reference: we are not yet "there," at a place which still revolts readers, and yet the "kinships are disquieting, all the more so since our technologies of bio-psycho-engineering are still in their infancy, and in ways that make all too clear what they might look like in their full maturity." Kass lays out for the reader a clear explanation of what cloning entails, and why all cloning should be banned-perhaps most crucial, he tells why it is still possible to put brakes on this "runaway train now headed for a post-human world and to steer it toward a more dignified human future." (Lending suport to his hope: on July 31st, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to ban human cloning.) Kass also has valuable words about stem-cell research: