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 What does it mean to be human? As the old saying goes, it depends on who you ask. Last June, in "The Debate of the Century", we asked Dr. Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Executive Chairman of the Center for Bioethics and Culture and Dr. Peter Singer, controversial Bioethicist from Princeton University this important question.
We at the Center for Bioethics and Culture believe this is the question we confront in "The Biotech Century". Dr. Cameron advocates the traditional Judeo-Christian view that human beings bear the image of God. Peter Singer holds a radical utilitarian view. Singer considers Cameron's view to be "speciesist" and rejects the notion that membership in the species homo sapien automatically qualifies one for "personhood" They found little to agree on.
Cameron maintains that "human dignity is indivisible. Young and old, weak and strong, the human family is held together by its common dignity and the inviolability that stems from it." Throughout the debate, Cameron reminded the audience, whether secular or religious, through the ages, we all have benefited from this view of humanity.
Singer disagrees. In his book, "Practical Ethics", he asserts that "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all." During the debate, Singer referred to morally relevant characteristics that define what it means to be human. While Cameron believes humanness is defined by what we are, Singer believes being human is defined by what we can do - rationality, self conciousness, and communication.
Because of Singer's radical view of what it means to be human, it should be of no surprise that the loudest protestors at the debate were from the disabled community. If our humanity is defined by what we are able to do, disabled people are the most at risk for being categorized as human non-persons. They may lack those capacities that would qualify them for personhood and the moral obligations that would protect them.
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| "His (Cameron) reference to 'medical futility' was an attempt to camouflage the fact that, like me, he takes quality of life into account in making medical decisions about life and death." - Peter Singer |
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| "The Judeo-Christian commitment to the dignity of the individual that has flowed powerfully into our ideas of democracy and law and human rights as well as bioethics is what is finally at stake in this debate, and it is at stake for believers and unbelievers alike." - Nigel Cameron |
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| November 20, 2002 |
| Dear
Concerned Citizen, |
The biggest chance that humans will face extinction does not come from asteroids hitting the earth, or from global warming, or from the dissolution of the ozone layer, or from nuclear holocaust. It comes from the possibility that we humans will make the decision to abolish the human race.
Why would we do that? In order to manufacture a New and Improved product. In order to achieve the New Man that socialist and Nazi schemes have long dreamed about. But what socialism and Nazism failed to accomplish politically, some people now seek to achieve technologically.
These people are the techno-utopians. Many of them have a strong libertarian bent. They want to use the new power of biotechnology to alter human nature, to straighten out what philosopher Immanuel Kant called "the crooked timber of humanity." As biologist Lee Silver puts it, "We can control our own evolution. We can decide what genes we give to our children."
The techno-utopians are opposed by a group that we could call the moral naysayers. Leon Kass, the chairman of President Bush's bioethics council, falls into this camp. So does political scientist Francis Fukuyama, author of Our Posthuman Future. Kass and Fukuyama argue that the techno-utopian project to remake humanity tramples on human dignity. To the naysayers, any effort to interfere with human nature represents the profoundest hubris. We should not, the naysayers say, "play God."
The naysayers complain about the coming biotechnological assault on human nature, but they ignore the fact that science has been modifying human nature for a long time. Nature does not give human beings the ability to fly, so do airplanes represent an attack on "human nature"? More to the point, whenever doctors administer vaccines to children, or take out someone's appendix, they are in a sense "playing God" and interfering with the normal course of nature. So what's different about genetic engineering?
Actually, there is a difference, but before spelling that out let us consider the enormous benefits of biotechnology. It offers the potential to cure disease and to extend human life. If you had a parent or child who was suffering from a deadly disease, wouldn't you approve the use of gene therapies that offer the prospect of a cure?
We should welcome the new technologies to the extent that they enable us to better pursue the traditional goals of medicine: to relieve suffering, heal the sick, and prolong life. At the same time, we should recognize that the new technologies cross a dangerous line when they go beyond curing human beings and to "enhancing" or "improving" human beings.
As Fukuyama points out, our belief in the sacredness of human nature is the basis of human dignity and of human rights. Whatever the benefits the techno-utopians think will accrue from an enhanced humanity, they do not have the right to impose their will on future generations-not even on their own children. The reason is that each of us has the natural right-the God-given right-to determine the scope of our own life.
Freedom is a libertarian principle, and it is highly ironic that one of the greatest threats to freedom today comes from people who describe themselves as libertarian. Ultimately the techno-utopians who want to use biotechnology to "enhance" other people reveal themselves not only as enemies of morality, but also as enemies of freedom.
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Dinesh
D'Souza Bio
Dinesh
D'Souza, the Rishwain Research Scholar at the Hoover Institution
at Stanford University, served as senior domestic policy analyst
in the White House in 1987-1988. He is the best-selling author
of Illiberal Education, The End of Racism, Ronald Reagan, The
Virtue of Prosperity, and What's So Great About America. He
is the tothesource designated expert on current American culture. |
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