Persons unknown - immorality of government policy to fund embryo research - Editorial

IF A PANEL of 19 experts at the National Institutes of Health has its way, 1994 will go down as a year in which mankind crossed another threshold from which there will be no return. The Human Embryo Research panel has recommended federal funding for scientists who produce embryos in the laboratory for the purpose of conducting experiments that will destroy them.

The recommendation is meeting with some resistance, but it will take immediate and aggressive congressional action to block government funding. (The NIH is accepting written comments on the panel's recommendations until November 1. Division of Science Policy Analysis, National Institutes of Health, 9000 Rockville Pike, Building 1, Room 218, Bethesda, Md. 20892.) The Washington Post called the panel's proposal "unconscionable," and went on to argue that supporting "abortion rights" does not mean "erasing society's ability to make distinctions." In fact, there is a strong overlap with abortion, but even people who think that it is justified to kill an unborn child in some circumstances can see the difference between abortion and producing human beings in the laboratory in order to use and then discard them.

The NIH panel has rendered one valuable service. The old debate about when human life begins is definitively laid to rest. The panel's report recognizes what the scientifically informed always knew, that human life begins at the moment of conception. But from that point of scientific lucidity the experts wander off into an ethical and philosophical fog. They propose that, until implantation in the womb (usually 14 days after conception), the embryo should be considered "not protectable," enabling scientists to do what they want with it. Certain limits are discussed, but the escape clause in every case is that exceptions should be made "for serious and compelling reasons." For instance, it is noted that, when laboratory animals will not serve the research in question, there is a serious and compelling reason for using human beings.

The question engaged here is the difference between human beings and animals. The panel fudges this by focusing attention on the alleged difference between an embryo and a "person." A person, we are told, is a human being who has "qualities" that we find "compelling." Human beings have no rights as such. The report is remarkably candid in claiming that it is up to us to decide which human beings are persons, and are therefore "protectable," and which not. This lethal logic could apply to the born as well as the unborn. The panel cites an article written by one of its members, "Toward a Copernican Revolution in Our Thinking about Life's Beginning and Life's End." The proposal is indeed revolutionary. It is a revolution about which the American people have not been consulted and to which they would certainly not give their consent.

Who will live and who will die? Who belongs to the community protected by law? Such questions cannot be decided by a government-appointed committee of experts. The panel claims that it is not embracing a particular philosophy or moral viewpoint. That is nonsense. The panel's moral philosophy is an embarrassingly crude version of utilitarianism: the end justifies the means. And, if the end is "serious and compelling" enought, it seems that it can justify any means. One of the foundation stones of Western civilization is that a human being is always to be treated as an end and never as a means. No longer, not if the NIH prevails. Its panel would establish in regulatory law the principle that human beings who lack the "qualities" that we find compelling are "non-persons" who can be used and discarded as we see fit. The very young, the very old, the very retarded, the very burdensome--we who are certified as persons will decide whether they should be admitted to the circle of "protectability."

The panel claims that it is recommending a "reasonable accommodation" of different viewpoints. In fact, the chairman announced at the panel's first meeting that it would be "inappropriate" to include on the panel anyone who opposed the research it wants the government to fund. In further fact, some of the members of the panel are doing precisely the kind of experiments for which they are seeking government funds. This turns what is supposedly an advisory panel of experts into a self-interested lobbying group.

The experiments endorsed by the Human Embryo Research Panel should not be federally funded. They should not be done, period. They should be prohibited by law. A prohibition may not be entirely effective, but then, neither is any prohibition against great evil. The panel's proposed Copernican Revolution in redefining human life is a great evil. It was not very long ago that a war was fought to defeat the odious doctrine that the powerful have the right to decide which human beings are, and which are not, entitled to the protection of law. The lives of the powerless are at stake. Also at stake is our own humanity.