Natural science?
Stem cell research and moral culpability.
A piece in The National Review commends a US district judge for halting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Before this ruling the Obama administration drew a distinction between the destruction of human embryos to create stem cell lines and the subsequent use of these stem cells in research. The destruction cannot be federally funded, but the research can. In light of the judge’s opinion that such a distinction was indefensible, the piece asks an interesting question.
On the one hand, it is true that all research on embryonic stem cells was preceded by and is made possible by the destruction of an embryo; the two acts are morally entangled. […] But on the other hand, imagine a young scientist just beginning his career, experimenting on stem cells derived from embryos destroyed years earlier, on the other side of the country, when he was still in junior high. Is he morally culpable for the act of embryo destruction?
Let us first assume that destroying and using human embryos is a morally impermissible act, even weighed against the possible good that stem cell research might produce. While this is an obviously controversial assumption on which philosophy has much to say, I will sidestep it for the sake of argument.
Does the causal link between destroying the embryos and using the stem cells in research produce the relevant “moral entanglement”?
Imagine, for example, a medical researcher who is using the organs of a murdered person. Here, there is also an obvious causal link between the murder and the medical research, yet there seems to be no moral entanglement. The researcher did not support the murder, and the murderer did not kill for the sake of research.
A better argument in opposition to using the embryos can be found by proposing a certain obligation to oppose, or at least protest, widespread injustice. If the injustice is institutionalized, then perhaps one cannot simultaneously oppose the injustice and be part of the institution.
So perhaps the institutionalized destruction of human embryos is so morally egregious that there is an obligation to oppose it, and being part of such a research program is incompatible with this obligation.
A response might rely on the fact that the destroyed embryos come from fertility clinics, where they would be discarded anyway. If the immorality in question will continue regardless of what one does, maybe it’s better to create some good, such as life-saving medical cures, out of the harm.
But this response may not be enough. Suppose Nazi researchers used the bodies of concentration camp victims as subjects. Even if the scientists couldn’t do anything to stop the Nazi regime themselves, and even if they could advance science significantly, it is still intuitive to think the researchers acted immorally. Simply put, there is some type of moral hypocrisy in opposing an unjust institution while still profiting from it.
If one views the process of picking apart and using embryos—even those from fertility clinics that will be discarded anyways—as some sort of institutionalized injustice that is morally comparable to killing, then it makes sense to argue that the researchers are acting immorally.
But if one views the process as some lesser wrong, then the fact that the embryos would be destroyed anyways, and that the research will create immense benefits, changes the moral calculus significantly.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user BWJones used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Related posts:
- Facts, values, and stem cells
- God, science and morality walk into a bar . . .
- Egg donation: something for everyone to hate
- A natural problem
- Sam Harris – Can science address morality?
ShareComments
Leave a Reply
