Published in Bioethics

The New York Times brings us a disturbing story today about the high costs--they emphasize the financial and emotional costs, but much could also be said about the high moral costs--of our modern (or is it post-modern?) ways of making babies.  I will leave it to you to wonder whether there is much in this story to make the effort sound appealing to you and yours . . . but I do rather wish that more couples with baby lust and considering the supposed wonders of IVF and other such procedures had girded themselves first with the facts presented in this piece.  There may be nothing more precious and worthy of esteem than the love and affection between parents and children.  But I do think it is legitimate to wonder whether the gift of a child ought to be so actively and fiercely solicited when it is not freely given.  And I also wonder whether, when it is so solicited and demanded, it is possible to remember that the result is still a gift.  The potential consequences of forcing nature in this way ought to give more people than it seems to do a reason for pause and reflection.  And it makes one wonder, too, if more ought not to be said about the many virtues and the pleasures of  the amazing gift of adoption.

Here's a response by members of President Bush's Council on Bioethics to Obama's recent statement and new policy. The president has undermined progress that has really been made to reconciling the needs of science and the moral concerns of many Americans, and it's not at all clear that he hasn't opened the door to reproductive cloning. I urge bloggers of all stripes to link this response to ensure that it provokes a real national discussion.

The new INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW has an article by ME explaining why THE PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS was right to say that now is the time for Americans to start talking seriously about human dignity.

I read with some interest President Obama's prepared remarks regarding his reversal of the Bush Administration's stem cell research policy.

Aside from the transparent preening about "restoring scientific integrity to government decision making," there's this very interesting and revealing bit:

Many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about, or strongly oppose, this research. I understand their concerns, and we must respect their point of view.

But after much discussion, debate and reflection, the proper course has become clear. The majority of Americans - from across the political spectrum, and of all backgrounds and beliefs - have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research. That the potential it offers is great, and with proper guidelines and strict oversight, the perils can be avoided.

That is a conclusion with which I agree. That is why I am signing this Executive Order, and why I hope Congress will act on a bi-partisan basis to provide further support for this research.

With respect to science and the ethical dilemmas we might confront, what matters most of all is what the majority thinks. And how do we discern what the majority thinks? Surely the election wasn't fought on this issue, so there's no "mandate" for this. (Is there a mandate for anything other than not being George W. Bush?) And while opinion polls might--in a way that is both too casual and too easily manipulated--take the public's temperature on an issue, I would be loathe to affirm that any matter of genuine high principle should be concluded by referring to the wishes of the majority. On this matter Barack Obama seems closer to Stephen F. Douglas than to Abraham Lincoln.

The President is right about one thing. He recognizes that he is "advancing the cause of science," which he professes to recognize might reveal to us some "inconvenient truths" (to borrow a phrase from some obscure former politico). Is "the cause of science" always consistent with our moral and religious principles? This language at least leaves open the possibility that it is not:

[P]romoting science isn't just about providing resources - it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient - especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda - and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

The agenda of science is supposed to trump any merely political agenda, even one presumably endorsed by a "majority." But what if the "political agenda" is based upon high principles, and the "truths" we discover are inconsistent with those principles? At the moment, President Obama seems to have one sticking point--reproductive cloning. But what if a majority of people decided that that would be just fine with them? (I'm sure some clever pollster could construct a question in a way that yields a majority in favor of reproductive cloning.) And what if some scientist--those Olympians beyond all merely democratic or republican questioning--promised a cure of some awful disease, if only we let him wander beyond the currently acceptable ethical limits? How much would we give to prolong our lives or the lives of loved ones?

Will President Obama have us choose the scientific way or the majoritarian way, if the two should happen to conflict? If you take him seriously here--a great risk, I know, but it's also, as we're learning, a great risk not to take him seriously--then I'd have to say that he'd go with science. After all, what we're talking about, he says, is "the progress of all humanity," which is no small consideration. This, he implies, is even endorsed by religion. We can avoid a "false choice" between "sound science and moral values" if only we interpret the principal goals of religion in terms of "car[ing] for each other and work[ing] to ease human suffering." If the goal of religion is, as that great political scientist Francis Bacon would have it, the "relief of man's estate," then President Obama is a Baconian "Christian." But I was persuaded a long time ago by a very fine Bacon scholar (no member of the religious right, he) that Bacon was well aware of the moral ambiguity and extraordinary heterodoxy of the project he was pursuing.

One wishes that our faux thoughtful and respectful President actually did take seriously the issues he so cavalierly and magisterially addresses.

Rick Garnett has some of the same reservations I have, and Yuval Levin demonstrates how political Obama's approach is.

Here, finally, is the second half of my legendary interview with the brilliant Dr. Riley.

Here's a fascinating interview with ME.

I will be giving a plenary session lecture next Saturday afternoon (the 19th) in Deerfield, Illinois at a conference for MDs, Christian leaders, and such on Health Care and the Common Good. My talk is at 2; there'll another by the legendary chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, Ed Pellegrino. A basic Google will give you more information. I'll be in town from Friday evening through very early Sunday morning should any Deerfieldians etc. want to come by. My talk will cover everything from Solzhenitsyn to subsidiarity in evaluating our present health care situation.

Here's an article by Bioethics Council member Robby George that explains both why the recent hype is bogus and why it's still the case that the good news is that current ethical dilemma involving the killing of embryos to acquire pluripotent stem cells probably is specific to a stage of scientific development about to be surpassed.

Apparently, it might be possible to harvest embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos. For more, go here and here. The NYT article has this:

Dr. Leon Kass, former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, said, "I do not think that this is the sought-for, morally unproblematic and practically useful approach we need."

Dr. Kass said the long-term risk of preimplantation genetic diagnosis was unknown and that the present technique was inefficient, requiring blastomeres from many embryos to generate each new cell line. It would be better to derive human stem cell lines from the body's mature cells, he said, a method researchers are still working on.

Wesley J. Smith is also unimpressed. What about Peter L.?

Update: Wesley J. Smith reads the article in Nature, not just the press release, and discovers, first of all, that the embryos from which the cells (yes, plural) were extracted were all in fact destroyed. So m-a-y-b-e at some time in the future (but not yet) we might be able to do what the articles suggested. A case of press boosterism, in other words. Smith also reminds us that the company (ACT) has profited from press boosterism in the past. Public opinion is trending in the direction of increasing support or stem cell research because of credulity among reporters, who rarely probe beyond the surface when claims of scientific advances of this sort are made.