In my last piece, Are We Stemming Stem Cells?, I wrote in favor of President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have funded embryonic Stem Cell research with tax dollars. In it I asked the following questions:
…Where is the limit? Will we eventually be arguing over the experimentation on – and harvesting of organs from – the terminally ill? Or the disabled? Or those with IQs under 100? How about babies less than 24 hours old – after all, do they really have a soul yet? Who are we allowed to mark for death?
The e-mails I received were interesting, to say the least.
One reader chastised me for playing the “emotion card”. “Nobody” he said, “is talking about killing babies or the disabled. We just don’t do that in our society.”
Don’t be so sure! Another reader pointed me to Peter Singer, who is a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and the author of several books on “bioethics”.
Here is a quote from his book “Practical Ethics”: “Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons.” He then reasons that since animals are self-aware, “the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”
Apparently this is a recurring theme for Mr. Singer. In another of his books, “Should the Baby Live?” he proposes that “a period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to live as others.”
Lest the reader suppose that Mr. Singer is alone in his disregard of the recently born, consider Michael Tooley, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado. Mr. Tooley suggests that “new-born humans are neither persons nor quasi-persons, and their destruction is in no way intrinsically wrong.” When do they become real persons? In a world governed by Michael Tooley’s philosophy, a newborn doesn’t acquire personhood until three months after they’re born!
The unnerving part is that these men are teaching these ideas to our future decision makers in prestigious colleges.
So I ask again… In this brave new world, who will we be allowed to experiment on? From whom can we harvest organs? Who are we allowed to mark for death?
Is it that great a leap from growing embryos for stem cell research to harvesting organs from newborns? Maybe not. . . if those newborns “aren’t really human”.
Editorial Comment: Starting August 9, Medical City Dallas Hospital has joined three other public cord banks in Texas as a processing center for umbilical cord stem cells. Their 3000 annual new mothers will be offered the opportunity to donate their newborn’s umbilical cord blood, which will be processed, frozen, and used to treat sick children with diseases such as leukemia. Their news release reminds prospective donors that there is no cost and no risk to themselves or their babies.