From the SMH - http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/decision-a-question-of-morality/2006/09/13/1157827015944.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Stem-cell decision is a question of morality, not science
THE Federal Parliament is facing a conscience vote on the issue of embryonic stem cell research. With the tabling of the Lockhart report and pressure from the scientific community to shift policy on this matter it may help to get the issue down to some basic points.
First, using embryonic stem cells for medical research is not a scientific question, but a moral one.
Science is good at telling us how to do things. It can tell us how to achieve certain ends and provide the means to do so. However, the decision as to whether those ends are good ends or whether the means to achieve them are ethical is not a scientific question.
Indeed, scientists have no special training in ethics and, as with anyone, their perspective on these issues can be tainted by a variety of factors: vainglory, pride, prospects of commercial gain. For example, scientists were good at telling us how to build nuclear weapons, but whether to use them or not is a moral, not a scientific, question. In the stem-cell debate is it easy to be dazzled by scientific claims and possibilities. These can never be the determiner of the debate.
Second, the key issue is and always will be the moral status of the embryo.
This is an issue on which the Lockhart report spent considerable time and effort. Yet here again science cannot determine an answer. Science is good at mapping various stages in the development of the embryo. But determining the moral status of the embryo cannot be separated from philosophical and metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality. Scientists often operate with quite primitive philosophical assumptions and, again, have no special training in this area.
Nonetheless, the scientific evidence they provide on the stages of development may be important for determining moral status. For example, there is some appreciation that the point of embryo development where its cells begin to separate to become the foetus and placenta is significant, but how significant is still an open question. And where such questions remain open moral caution may be called for.
Third, just because religious people hold a position does not make the position religious. Religious people hold to many things, for example, the value of marriage and the immorality of slavery. Most people hold these positions; they are not exclusive to religious people.
Many religious people hold to the position that an embryo has a claim to the status of a human being. However, this is not necessarily a religious position. The Bible says nothing about the moral status of the embryo. Neither do the other great teachings of the Christian tradition. Nonetheless, Christians do generally hold that embryos deserve the rights associated with human beings.
It has been in Christian societies that democracy and concern for human rights have emerged. Christian societies led the way in the abolition of slavery. It is not without aberrations, but in general the Judaeo-Christian heritage of the West has served it well as a moral guide in promoting positions we now take for granted.
Fourth, given there is no middle ground between respecting the rights of the embryo and not respecting them, the debate will not go away.
As with the abortion debate, it will be difficult to find any middle ground in this area. Either an embryo has the moral status of a human being or it does not. Clearly at some stage in its development we all accept that it does. The question, then, is when? If one accepts that the moral status begins at conception, then the use of embryos for experimentation, no matter how good the final goal, can never be justified.
Such a matter can never be just the subject of private opinion because we are talking about an issue of social policy. Attempts to make these moral issues a question of private morality are as spurious as claiming that slavery could be a private matter.
The Lockhart report claims that "in the face of moral diversity, it is unjustifiable to ban embryo research and therapeutic cloning". One might equally conclude that in the face of moral diversity extra caution is required before proceeding. Alternative possibilities exist, using adult stem cells.
The Federal Parliament was cautious in 2002 in establishing the present limitations on stem-cell research. Nothing substantial has changed since then.
Professor Neil Ormerod is director of the Institute of Theology, Philosophy and Religious Education at the Australian Catholic University.
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Letters to the Editor - Cloning Canbera Times 15th September 2006
In Canberra yesterday pro-cloning scientists lobbied Federal parliamentarians to overthrow the current ban on cloning humans for use in research which would destroy them by extracting their stem cells. The biggest irony lay in the words of Dr Peacock, the Federal Government's chief scientific adviser, calling for a “better understanding of the basic biological things that are being talked about” (Canberra Times 14 September 2006 p 6).
What lack of understanding is he referring to? A human life can be initiated by the fusion of sperm and egg or by the introduction of a somatic body cell into an enucleated egg (ie, “cloning”). Both scientists and physicians know very well that human embryos, however created, are alive and human.
Yet pro-cloning scientists are confusing us by insisting that an embryo created for research only is not ‘really’ an embryo. This rivals Humpty Dumpty’s scornful ‘when I use a word it means what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’. (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass).
The Lockhart Review Committee said “once a cell is created (by nuclear transfer or any other means) that has the same potential to continue development as a cell formed by fertilisation of a human egg and a human sperm, it is included in the definition of a human embryo.”
The issue before Federal Parliament is solely an ethical one. Killing human embryos for research is ethically repugnant; our legislators should continue to ban such a practice.
Carolyn Mongan
CAMPBELL ACT 2612