Mr. Moderate

One of the clear lessons from the Holocaust of the 20th century is that certain types of scientific inquiry are clearly immoral (or unethical) to perform. The infamous Nazi human experiments on prisoners disgusted the entire world, and such activities have been all-but-universally condemned. It is even questionable whether the ethical scientist ought to use or cite to the results of such ethically despicable research. I agree with those who would permit it under extraordinary circumstances and with appropriate condemnation of the unethical basis of the research in question. But few would question that scientific inquiry into medical subjects must be subordinate to considerations of medical ethics, and frankly I would condemn the ethics any who would question such subordination.

As I have written, my ethical hierarchy is grounded in survival. But we are all aware that even animals will sacrifice themselves in some ways to preserve the survival of their species through their own young. So, it does not necessarily follow that ethical scientific inquiry must necessarily avoid death for the organisms under study. To put this in a readily-understandable human context, we are “at war” with certain diseases, and in any war, some soldiers will die even if we do our best to preserve their lives. Since animals are viewed as “property” the ethical concerns with animal experimentation are somewhat different than they are with human experimentation. However, even there, we recognize that owned animals have certain rights to treatment according to recognized ethical standards. Accordingly, most of us would agree that there are limits to what scientific researchers can be allowed to do to owned animals for the purpose of scientific research. However, most of us would disagree with the limits sought to be imposed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The benefit of having an organization which takes such an extreme view of animal rights is that at least we can attempt to have a conversation about the proper limits upon the treatment of animals.

As noted above, we have very different ethical standards for the use of humans in scientific experiments and the use of animals in scientific experiments. There are very good reasons for those differences. Two of the most important reasons are that humans can give informed consent while animals cannot, and animals are property while humans are not. In fact, most animals that are used for scientific experiments are specially bred to order for such experimental uses, and it can be truly said that those animals would not exist at all but for the scientific experiments they were bred to participate in.

The biggest ongoing public debate of this type at the moment concerns stem cell research. But if the parents give a proper informed consent to the use of their owned embryos which would otherwise be discarded or destroyed, then I’m afraid I do not see any ethical issue with that sort of research. If we were talking about a baby that had been born, we would allow the parents to give an informed consent to ethical treatment for the baby. And if we were talking about an animal that the parents owned, we would allow that animal to be used in accordance with ethically approved scientific inquiry. I am afraid that I am unwilling to recognize that a small dot of cells that is cryogenically frozen somehow has a “right to life” that goes against the wishes of the parents. And, of course, if the parents choose to have their unused embryos adopted, that is their right as well.

But clearly, I would not give scientists any unfettered right to do whatever they wish with human embryos. All scientific research is subject to ethical limits, and scientific research involving human cells must be subject to the most careful considerations of our shared ethical values. But similarly, I would also not automatically bar scientists from experiments on human embryos any more than I would seek to bar animal or human experiments of any type just for the sake of respecting the lives of those creatures. In fact, I would assert that we have an ethical duty to future generations of humans to investigate diseases that appear in the human population and attempt to derive cures whenever we ethically can do so. Let us never forget the basic reason why such research is ethically permissible: because it will prevent uncounted future humans from disease, suffering, and/or death.