Significant Moral Value (Kevin
Doran)
(A
comment on the Opinion of the Irish Council for Bioethics on Embryo Research: Sunday
Business Post:
The idea of the Irish
Council for Bioethics granting "significant moral value" to human
embryos would be amusing, if it were not so arrogant.
Last week's opinion
published by the council said: "On consideration of the various arguments
relating to the moral status of the embryo, the council adopts a gradualist
position, granting significant moral value, rather than full moral status, to
human embryos. The moral value they are seen to possess is based on recognition
of their potential to develop into persons, as well as the value they derive
from representing human life in its earliest stages."
In initial discussions
18 months ago, I indicated that Catholics had some difficulty with the idea of
"assigning rights" to the embryo, which was the terminology the
council was proposing at the time. My problem is that this might be taken to
imply a reference to civil or discretionary rights. The Catholic perspective is
that the rights of the embryo derive from its nature and, in that sense, are
human rights, the kind that would be described in some documents as
self-evident. Such rights are not assigned or granted (as the report now
suggests).
The obligation to
respect life begins at the point when individual human life begins -- or even
when there is a reasonable possibility that it may have begun. The council
rejects the argument that the embryo is a person, on the grounds that
personhood implies characteristic personal activity (or sentience). But human
or personal activity is the result of being a person, not the cause of it. The council seems to be
falling into the common trap of confusing "person" and
personality." The embryo is a person, but it doesn't have personality.
The opinion said that
the council believes that "the moral value of human embryos that will
otherwise remain frozen or be destroyed needs to be balanced against the moral
value of human welfare, which is likely to increase with advances in medical
science that ameliorate quality of life. While accepting the value of human
life demands that we hold significant respect for embryos, it also demands that
we consider our obligations to care for humankind more generally. The Council
would, therefore, consider embryonic stem cell research to be acceptable in
certain contexts."
While the council said
it did not think that the creation of embryos specifically for research was
currently justified or represented a proportional response while
"supernumerary IVF embryos" existed, it reserved the right to re-evalute the balance between ethical concerns and the value
to society of such research if IVF processes become more efficient, with a
resulting drop in the number of "supernumerary embryos" available for
research, or if the therapeutic potential of somatic cell nuclear transfer (
The underlying ethos
of the council's opinion is predominantly utilitarian. In effect it says:
"We would prefer not to destroy embryos, but if it seems to serve a useful
purpose, we will." It is easier, of course, to make this kind of judgment
if one sees oneself as granting moral value to the embryo.
Similarly, the opinion
that embryos should not be generated specifically for research,
is subject to a utilitarian caveat. The council effectively says: "If
supplies of embryos from IVF dry up, then we might reconsider this." In
other words, the council has no principled objection.
But then the bioethics
council goes on to argue against the undue instrumentalisation
of human life. Is there a principle anywhere in all of this?
It is good that the
council recognises cloned embryos as having the same
value as so-called "supernumerary embryos". Unfortunately, this is a
rather limited value.
There are a number of
important issues around the use of terminology.
The report said the
Council "supports the carefully regulated use of supernumerary IVF embryos
-- that are otherwise destined to be destroyed -- for the purposes of embryonic
stem cell research aimed at alleviating human suffering. The decision to donate
supernumerary embryos for research should be voluntary, free from any form of
coercion and made under the strict conditions of informed consent". The
designation of certain embryos as "surplus" or
"supernumerary" tends to imply that they are of less value, or that
they are less entitled to be protected. It suggests that, by using them for
research, they are given some value, whereas otherwise they would die
uselessly. This view also flows from the underlying utilitarian ethos of the
opinion. Objectively speaking, the value of so-called "supernumerary
embryos" is exactly the same as that of any other embryo. They are only
"destined" to die because of the decisions that people have made
about them.
In the opinion, a
distinction is made between "reproductive cloning", for the purposes
of transmitting life to a new human being, and "therapeutic cloning",
which would be for the purpose of obtaining embryos for biomedical research. In
reality, whatever its ultimate purpose and whatever terminology people may choose
to employ, human cloning is always reproductive, in that the
immediate result of cloning is the generation of a human being. It is never
"therapeutic", in the generally understood sense of the term, because
it never contributes to the health or well-being of the embryo who is the
subject of research. Any distinction between "therapeutic" and
"reproductive" cloning is unscientific and spurious, and appears
designed to facilitate the use of embryos for research.
On the topic of
animal-human chimeras, the report said: "If the creation of embryos for
research were deemed to be acceptable at some point in the future, the council
would have no principled objection to the creation of human-animal hybrid cell
lines, which would obviate concerns relating to coercion and exploitation of
women".
An embryo may be
cloned using an animal ovum (egg), where the animal nucleus is removed and
replaced with the nucleus of a human cell. As the ICB notes in the document,
this does not mean that all of the animal
Crucially, the opinion
of the Irish Council for Bioethics does not reflect the outcome of its public
consultation. According to the council's own analysis of the consultation,
respondents were fairly well balanced between men and women and there were more
respondents under 45 than over.
A huge majority of
these were opposed to research using embryonic stem cells, the generation of
embryos specifically for research or the generation of hybrid human-animal
embryos.
There are risks in
determining ethics by public consultation, because popular opinion doesn't
always reflect the truth. But it does seem odd that the opinion of the council
is so much at variance with the public perception of this issue.
The one question to
which there seemed to be no very clear answer was who should fund embryonic
stem-cell research, if it were allowed in Ireland. Presumably this is because
the vast majority of those who might be expected to meet these costs believe
such research shouldn't be permitted.