Human Life on Ice
Biotechnology, Human Dignity & the Teaching of the Church
by John M. Haas
The man across the table from me was articulate, passionate, zealous, brilliant, principled, and committed to doing good. I had sat spellbound as he delivered for my personal benefit one of the most fascinating and lucid microbiology lectures I had ever heard. He was also engaged in research that I found morally reprehensible.
His company, Advanced Cell Technology, was taking the DNA from human somatic cells, placing it in enucleated cows’ eggs, and beginning the cloning process for a human being. The organism would be allowed to grow to a mass of about 100 cells before it would be dissected to obtain human cells for research. These were cloned human beings with cow mitochondrial genetic material.
The company had no interest in producing cross-species creatures. Its activities were driven by concerns of simple research, efficiency, and cost control. For the cloning process, cows’ eggs were easier and cheaper to obtain than human ova. Also, the cows’ eggs were bigger than human ova and easier to work with. These were utilitarian concerns, pure and simple.
But as we spoke in his boardroom, in his laboratories human embryos were lying in petri dishes, subjected to experimentation, dissected, and killed; some were frozen for future use. Human embryos—embryonic human beings—it does not matter how it is put; they were beings who were human.
Divine Dignity
The poet, philosopher, and theologian within our cultural tradition all once spoke of the transcendent worth and inviolability of the human being. Legislators, jurists, warriors, and police once protected the innocent of our species, from the moment of conception. The medical profession from the time of the pagan Hippocrates swore never to kill the unborn child. In more recent times the World Medical Association adopted the Declaration of Geneva, which includes an oath for physicians to take upon beginning their medical career: “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of conception.”
It was human life that engendered such awe, the creature before whom we stood in reverence, for in this creature we saw even more than ourselves. We could see the very image of God himself. We were not simply one species among others. As the psalmist, and later the apostle would declare: “What is man, O Lord, that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, subjecting all things under his feet” (Heb. 2:6–8).
The bard and playwright Shakespeare declared with equal eloquence: “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties . . . in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals” (Hamlet, act 2, scene 2).
But it was man’s godlike qualities that set him apart. His dignity was a participatory dignity, for One alone is truly good, the One in whose image we knew we had been created and by whom we have been redeemed.
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more from the online archives
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24.3—May/June 2011
The Making & Endurance of the King James Bible, 1611-2011 by Barton Swaim
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on Fatigued Christians Deciding to Engage the Culture by Keith Lowery
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