Embryo: A Defense of Human Life
By Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen. Doubleday (New York, 2008). 242 pp. $23.95.
The national debate on embryonic stem-cell research has engaged lawmakers, pundits and ordinary Americans for almost a decade without producing many worthwhile books.
A few scientists pursuing the research have speculated how stem cells obtained by destroying human embryos may cure conditions ranging from Alzheimer's disease to diabetes to aging itself, ushering in a "brave new world" of biotechnology. Science writers have tried to explain the possibilities of the research in popular surveys that were already obsolete the moment they were published. A few overviews have tried to bring the science together with reporting on the social and ethical debate, but have cast little new light on it.
"Embryo: A Defense of Human Life" by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen is different. It delves beneath the surface of the current debate to analyze the ethical issue at stake. Embryonic stem-cell research confronts us with the question whether we may ever directly destroy an innocent human life solely for expected benefits to others.
Citing the latest findings of embryology, the authors carefully explain why the 1-week-old embryo must objectively be acknowledged as a "human life," and proceed to take on every major argument used by scientists, ethicists and others to justify taking this life.
These authors are well equipped for the task. Both are Catholic philosophers who write and teach about ethics at secular universities. George, of Princeton, has also served for six years on the President's Council on Bioethics, where he has engaged this debate at length with some of the leading academic experts supporting destructive embryo research.
This is not to say that their argument is dry and academic. They begin very engagingly, citing the case of a young child named Noah Benton Markham who was born in January 2007. Like his namesake, Noah was rescued from a flood --- in his case, the flooding of a New Orleans hospital caused by Hurricane Katrina. But he was saved by rescue workers when he was still a frozen embryo stored in the hospital's fertility clinic.
The authors ask: Does anyone really doubt that it was Noah Markham who was rescued that day? Wasn't that embryo the same individual Noah now is, albeit at a very early stage of development?
That's the point, some would say. The embryo is too undeveloped and primitive to be considered a person of moral worth. But the authors carefully analyze this and other arguments against full respect for human life at the embryonic stage --- showing, for example, that if we base moral worth on the current ability to exercise various physical or mental abilities, we undermine the basic rights of many people already born as well.
Gradually one realizes that the book's subtitle --- "A Defense of Human Life" --- is meant very seriously: By defending the embryo, we defend the very idea of human life as having inherent dignity. Conversely, if we dismiss the embryo as a form of life we can destroy at will for supposed medical benefits, we leave little basis for defending other unpopular or marginalized members of the human race once someone sees them as being worth more dead than alive.
In short, this is a terrific book. It takes on a timely and intensely debated moral issue, honestly confronts the arguments by opponents, and makes a case for a moral position with wit and civility. It does so without talking down to its audience, descending into academic jargon, or resorting to specifically religious premises.
Readers concerned about the moral issue of embryonic stem-cell research will find new and rigorous arguments to support their concern; supporters of the research will have some thinking to do.
Richard M. Doerflinger is associate director of the Office of Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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