the great divide in ethics over the
MYSTERY OF HUMAN LIFE
by
MARGARET SOMERVILLE
__________________________________________________________
Margaret
Somerville is Professor of Bioethics in the School of Medicine
at the University of Notre Dame Australia. Until recently, she
was Samuel Gale Professor of Law, Professor in the Faculty of
Medicine, and Founding Director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics
and Law at McGill University, Montreal. Her most recent book is
Bird on an Ethics Wire: Battles about Values in the Culture
Wars. This article originally appeared in Mercatornet
(www.mercatornet.com).
IS THERE SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT HUMANITY?
I suggest that
the most fundamental divide in contemporary Western democratic
societies relevant to ethical issues relating to science and medicine,
is between those who believe there is a mystery in human life
– even if it’s just the mystery of the unknown/Unknown
– and those who adamantly deny there could be any mystery
in their existence and are certain this life is all that there
is.
The latter answer
the questions “Who am I?” and “What am I doing
here?” with “I am a living, conscious biological entity”
and “There is no point to my existence other than to experience
this world while I exist and to avoid or ameliorate suffering
for myself and others.”
Some people who
adopt this view argue that there are no morally or ethically relevant
differences between humans and other animals, that a human is
just another animal in the forest. Consequently, animals’
“rights” and our responsibilities to them with respect
to what does and doesn’t constitute ethical treatment of
them are the same as humans enjoy or owe. What we don’t
do to humans we should not
do to animals and what we do for humans we should do for animals.
Consistent with
that view, the “no mystery” adherents reject the idea
that humans are “special” as compared with other animals
-- the concept of human exceptionalism -- and, therefore, that
humans have rights and protections not accorded to animals. They
propose that just as there is no mystery in animals’ existence
(a view which can be challenged, although it’s true that
animals don’t ask themselves “Who am I?” or
“What am I doing here?”), the same is true of humans’
existence, in that both life forms are explicable on the same
purely biological and evolutionary bases.
Yet, some non-believers
seem to seek a form of spirituality, perhaps a ‘secular
spirituality,’ which could be an oxymoron. For example,
the online magazine Tikkun speaks of “Spiritual
Activism Training” and invites people to “join our
interfaith and secular-humanist-and-atheist-welcoming Network
of Spiritual Progressives (no, you don’t have to be religious
or believe in God to be a spiritual progressive--you only have
to want our society to be governed by a New Bottom Line of love,
generosity, environmental responsibility and awe and wonder at
our wondrous universe).”
In contrast, those
who believe there is a mystery in human life often answer the
question, “Who am I?” by finding their identity, at
least in part, in a religion or spiritual practices, seeing themselves
as having a soul or spirit and experiencing transcendence, the
feeling of belonging to something larger than themselves. Many
respond to the question, “What am I doing here?” with
a belief that this life is not the end of their existence, but
is a way stop on a larger trajectory.
So how do these
different views play out in relation to some contemporary social-ethical
values debates, such as legalizing euthanasia? Or the use of new
molecular genetic technologies, for example, altering the human
germ line (the genes passed on from generation to generation)?
Or reproductive technologies, such as making artificial gametes
(sperm or ova) to allow two women or two men to have a
genetically shared child, or human cloning, or ectogenesis (gestation
of a baby outside a woman’s body) using an artificial uterus,
or transplanting a uterus to a man so he can bear a child? Or
transplanting human brain cells into rats’ brains?
Those who do not
believe that there is any mystery in human life that must be respected
and especially if they give priority to individuals’ rights
to autonomy, will be likely to see some or even all of these interventions
as ethically acceptable. They will do this by analyzing each of
these situations as presenting a problem to be addressed with
a technological solution and argue that great good can be done
by
implementing that solution.
So a lethal injection
is seen as the solution to the ‘problem’ of death,
rather than natural death being accepted as a mystery to be respected.
If a suffering person wants euthanasia, it’s their life
and, therefore, their right to decide to end it -- perhaps, even
if they are not suffering, although some would consider protecting
the ‘common good’ justifies refusing the latter.
Altering the human
germ line solves the problem of passing on to our children serious
inherited disease, even though it involves designing our children
and constitutes a failure to accept them simply because they are
our children -- it contradicts the mystery of unconditional parental
love.
Creating a clone
overcomes the problem of the shortage of tissues or organs for
transplantation, although, like altering the human germ line,
it negates the mystery of “the great genetic lottery of
the passing on of human life.” It rests on the argument
that if a person wants to be cloned that is only their business,
unless again the ‘common good’ is a limiting factor
or the rights of the clone not to be brought into existence or
used in that way are taken into account.
Creating artificial
gametes provides a response to the problem of a married same-sex
couple’s longing for a genetically shared child; an artificial
uterus solves the problem for a woman who wants a child, but does
not want to interrupt her career with a pregnancy; and a uterine
transplant the problem faced by a man who wants to experience
pregnancy (and, in the past, such men have contacted me). Individuals’
‘absolute rights to reproductive freedom’ would support
as ethical, making available artificial gametes, ectogenesis and
probably a uterine transplant to a man, unless wider considerations
were factored in and militated against these procedures. And transplanting
human brain cells into rats’ brains in research on artificial
intelligence raises the possibility of rats having some level
of human consciousness. The consequences are literally and metaphorically
mind-blowing and the ethical issues are unprecedented.
If, on the other
hand, we believe that there is a mystery in human life that must
be respected, starting with life itself, and if we see one or
more of these interventions as failing to respect some aspect
of that mystery, we will regard them as unethical.
For instance,
in relation to euthanasia, former Australian Prime Minister Paul
Keating, commenting on the defeat of the NSW Voluntary assisted
Dying Bill by one vote, has just written: “By a whisker,
the NSW upper house has preserved the country’s ethical
clarity. The Council didn’t cave in to the defeatism of
those who think the struggle at the end of life is a struggle
in vain . . . The state should be giving a lead on the optimism
of life not the pessimism of Suicide . . . What we need is kindness,
compassion and palliative care. We
need our hand held rather than the state giving up on us, by underwriting
our ignominious departure. We need faith in our human experience,
and by faith, I mean not religious faith, but faith that goes
to the essence of our importance, that goes to who and what we
are.”
I have described
the two poles of a spectrum of views about the ethics that should
govern our technological interventions in human life. Many people
probably fall somewhere along that spectrum, including those who
are non-religious, rather than non-believers, the ‘nones,’
around 70 percent of whom, surveys show, believe in a supernatural
power or even God. And over half of atheists surveyed say they
have a sense of wonder at the natural world. Might this be a mystical
experience? If so, could a reconnection with Nature and revaluing
of the natural bring the views of more of us on the ethics of
the use of technologies, such as those considered above,
closer together?
