Ponder Anew 2!

Kyle Fedler on "Bioethics and 'Biblical Personhood'"

Kyle Fedler, Chair of the Religion Department at Ashland University in Ohio, was the speaker on January 17 for the second of nine presentations on "The Moral Status of the Human Fetus" in the Jack W. Provonsha Lectures Series at Loma Linda University.  This series is organized by LLU's Center for Christian Bioethics.  Mark Carr is the Director and Dawn Gordon is the Manager.

Fedler's title was "Child or Chattel:  Biblical Views on the Moral Status of the Embryo."  It was clear from the outset that for him the Old and New Testaments constitute a religious canon and not merely a cultural classic.  They do for me as well. 

The conclusion of his presentation was that combining Biblical perspectives with contemporary scientific knowledge yields the conclusion that the new life should be viewed as a human person from about four to five weeks of gestational age and onward. 

This presumably allows for contraceptive measures that frustrate implantation, like IUDs and RU486, so-called "morning after pills," stem cell research and discarding unclaimed embryos at fertility clinics.

Fedler reminded the audience that the Old and New Testaments were written in a variety of genres over a number of centuries a long time ago and that neither makes any direct reference to abortion, pro or con.  Arguments from silence either way need to be viewed with caution, he stated.

He reviewed a number of passages that people use in support of the full personhood of the fetus.  Some of these speak against shedding human blood(Genesis 9:6) and for having many children IGenesis 13:16 & 15:5).  Other passages depict God interacting with prenatal human life:  Isaiah (Isaiah 49:1) Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4), a psalmist (Psalm 139:13-16) and Job (Job 10:8-11).

Fedler also referred to two passages that seem to accord less than full personhood to the fetus.  In one of these (Numbers 5:11-28), he said, the priests are instructed to give women who are suspected of being unfaithful to their husbands a potion that will cause them to abort if they are guilty.  This suggests that the lives of fetuses was less important than determining what the women had actually done.

The second passage (Genesis 2:7) states that at creation God breathed "into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. "   Fedler said that some infer from this passage that the new life should not be viewed as a person until he or she can independently breathe, shortly after birth.

Fedler also commented on the most controversial passage of them all: 

When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the the judges determine.  If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.  Exodus 21:22-24.  New Revised Standard Version.

He identified three interpretative translations.  In the New Revised Standard Version one finds the most frequent reading.  This is that the lighter penalty of a fine is appropriate if the woman miscarries but experiences no further harm.  If she, the woman, is harmed above and beyond the miscarriage, the more severe penalty is required.

In the New International Version the woman does not miscarry; she prematurely gives birth to a living infant.  If this is all that happens, the fine applies.  But if in addition to this either the mother or the prematurely born infant is harmed, then the greater punishment is required.

Both the NRSV and the NIV are contemporary translations, the first more "ecumenical" and the second more "evangelical" as people in the United States often use these terms. 

Felder checked the Septuagint as well.  In this ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew, the distinction is between an unformed and formed fetus when the woman miscarries.  If it is "unformed," presumably because it is very young in gestational age, the fine is the penalty.  If the fetus is formed, presumably because it is further along in the pregnancy, it is the more drastic "life for life, eye for eye" and so forth.

Fedler noted that some see in the New Testament condemnations of pharmakeia (Galatians 5:19-21 and Revelation 9:21) a warning against using drugs that cause abortions.  He also notes that the text uses  brephos, a Greek word for "child," when it declares that John jumped in his mother Elizabeth's womb when she heard the greeting of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus.

Finding none of these passages definitively illuminating, whether in the Old or New Testament, Felder followed Richard Hayes in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996) in seeking guidance from seemingly unrelated passages that may actually be more helpful.  One of these is the story Jesus told about "The Good Samaritan" (Luke 10:25-37) in which the boundaries between those who are worthy of our protection and assistance are broadened to include more those often left out. 

Another is the suggestion that Christians ought to follow the example of Jesus Christ, "Who though he was in the form of God, did hot regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,taking the form of a slave" and so forth (Philippians 1:5-7).  Instead of giving us specific instructions, Fedler suggested that passages such as these depict in broad strokes what kinds of people those of us who are Christians should be and what kinds of things we should do."

Fedler's own proposal was that "somewhere between two weeks and four weeks the embryo undergoes developments that result in it becoming what the Bible would characterize as a person."  This rests upon what he understands "Biblical personhood," to be, on the one hand, and scientific evidence, on the other.

"Possessing human DNA is neither sufficient nor necessary for being a 'person,' he held.  It is not sufficient because things like skin cells have human DNA and no one thinks of them as "persons."  It is not necessary because there may well be "persons" who do not have human DNA.  If I recall correctly, Fedler described ET as a "person" of this sort.

To be a "person" in the Biblical sense of the term, Fedler contended, is to be an individual who either has the ability to be in relationships--presumably, I'm guessing, with self, others and God--or this potential.  He held that the new life begins to possess this potential between four and five weeks of gestational age because this is when its central nervous system begins to form.  Before then its structure is too simple.

Both at the beginning and at the end of his presentation, Fedler emphasized that there is no "definitive moment" before which nothing matters and afterward everything does.  Rather, from fertilization to birth the entire process of human gestation is a relatively smooth process.  But after a month or so the new life has developed enough neurological complexity to require us to treat it differently, he contended.

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If there had been an opportunity, I would like to have explored several issues with Fedler. 

The first of these would have concerned Exodus 21.  Although I respect and appreciate the care with which he examined its various interpretations, I find it unnecessary to do so because the verses in question are embedded in a passage that contains much material that we rightly do not apply to our lives today.  The very verses in question portray the woman as the property of her husband who deserves to be compensated if she is harmed. 

Instead of doing what Fedler did, I think it is appropriate to exhibit this and then to move on to other things, having established that no one can legitimately appeal to this portion of Scripture in making his or her case about the moral status of the human embryo.

My second question would have concerned the likely implications of his emphasis on "personhood" at the other end of life.  I believe that his position implies that humans who have permanently lost the ability to enter into relationships are no longer "persons" in the technical way he is uses the term.  The implication of this would seem to be that in such cases we need not--or perhaps even should not--prolong the individual's life but instead do everything we can to make his or her process of dying as comfortable and dignified as possible.

I agree with Fedler's emphasis upon "personhood" and I endorse these likely implications.  I suspect that he endorses them too; however, I would like to know for certain.  I also hope that we can replace "person" and "non-person" with terms that are less likely to be misunderstood.  But I'm not sure what they might be!

My third question would have concerned the importance he put on the fourth or fifth week.  I am not sure what he would find ethically acceptable before this and what he would find ethically unacceptable after it.  He did say that his position does not mean that before the first month "anything goes."  We can therefore presume that he would also that it does not mean that after this time "nothing goes."  But to my recollection Fedler was not more specific than this.

But why choose the first month?  It seems to me that implantation is the most dramatic change in an otherwise relatively smooth process and that from then on we need to keep in mind that we are dealing with two biologically human and living entities.  Once it has successfully implanted, the new life has the potential, meaning the inherent power, to become a human person and that as gestation progresses it increases moves toward this goal. 

Already at implantation, within the first week or so, in my view, it is a potential human person.  Before that, the conceptus, and before that the ovum and sperm, are not potential but possible human persons.  What happens around the fourth or fifth week is important; however, as Felder himself said, the entire process is relatively smooth.  I would say that this is so after implantation but not before.

For me this means that those of us who are Christians should be much more hesitant about terminating an established pregnancy than discarding or using in research or therapy embryos that have not implanted.  Although this provides much opportunity for manipulating stem cells, it amounts to a strong ethical presumption against abortion and this presumption intensifies as the pregnancy progresses.

All presumptions can be overturned and a number of additional factors can overturn this one.  These include rape, incest, serious fetal malformations and significant threats to the woman's physical, mental and social wellbeing. 

Just as in a court of law an individual is presumed to be Innocent until the evidence establishes otherwise, so also I think that those of us who are Christians should presume that an embryo that has successfully implanted should be protected until other factors indicate the contrary.  The default position is "pro-life" but this is presumptive, not absolute.

My responses to Fedler are endeavors in Christian bioethics that say nothing about what laws or other public policies should regulate the practice of abortion for all citizens.  All laws should embody ethical principles but not all ethical principles should be embodied in laws. 

My view is that at present and well into the foreseeable future some national norm along the lines of Roe v Wade is the most appropriate public policy, all things considered.   

 

               

Albert E. Reece on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research

"Possibly, but not yet," was the answer.  The question was whether medicine can continue moving forward without acquiring human embryonic stem cells.  The key term was "embryonic."

E. Albert Reece, a Seventh-day Adventist physician who now serves as Vice President and Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, is the one who proposed the answer.

Delivered on Thursday evening, January 10, at Loma Linda University, his presentation was the first of what will be nine weekly lectures on "The Moral Status of the Human Embryo."  I hope to post a report like this one for all nine. 

This is the "Jack W. Provonsha Lecture Series" for 2008.  It is organized by the LLU Center for Christian Bioethics.  Doctor Provonsha was a minister, physician and ethicist who taught at LLU for many years.  Mark Carr is the Director of the Center and Dawn Gordon is the Manager.  Thanks to them, the series is off to a good start!

Thousands of human embryos are discarded each year because they are no longer needed in fertility clinics.  Can patient care progress without looking to them for stem cells?  Although this a factual question, it emerges from intense ethical controversy.

Beginning with what he called "Stem Cells 101," Reece indicated that very early in human pregnancy when the new life is a microscopic cluster of cells, scientists can coax them into becoming many different kinds of tissues that can be helpful in treating patients.  They gradually become more specialized, moving from "totipotent," to "pluripotent" and "multipotent" and presumably on to "unipotent," or nearly so, when they are of little therapeutic value.

The trouble is that, although reliable surveys show that their number is declining, many Roman Catholics and Protestants object on moral grounds to acquiring stem cells from human embryos because doing do kills them and, they hold, wounds society.  This is why George W. Bush restricted financial support from the federal government to research on the so-called "Presidential Lines" that were on hand when his administration took over.

But these lines are few in number and some of them have been contaminated.  Many hope that the next President will reverse Bush's policy so that the federal government can join private financiers, individual states like California and New York and other nations in providing funding.

Meanwhile a number of researchers who are looking to other sources in order to circumvent the ethical controversies are having some success.  Stem cells acquired from adults can be "reversed engineered," to use a term I incorporate from other discussions, to function in important ways like those from embryos.  Although this is a promising alternative, Reece asserted that embryonic stem cells remain "the gold standard."

Not looking to them has several "opportunity costs," he stated.  Over time more patients are likely to suffer and die and the financial expenses of caring for them will soar.  Also, more indirect "human costs," that are real even though they are less able to be quantified, will ripple through society.  We need informed and responsible ethical positions, he stated.

Reece held that the conclusions toward which a group of Seventh-day Adventist specialists have been moving is "subtle, balanced and middle of the road."  This emerging stance holds that attempts to acquire stem cells from other sources should continue but that acquiring them from embryos should be limited to techniques that neither harms nor kills them.

This startled some in the audience because many all over the world have taken it for granted that acquiring stem cells from embryos inevitably compromises their well-being.  How could it be otherwise?

Reece countered that it increasingly appears that very early on scientists can remove one cell from the developing cluster without harming the others.  Indeed, in a dramatic flourish, he read to the audience from the Internet a report in the Washington Post for January 10, which was published just a few hours before he began his Loma Linda lecture, that scientists "have created several lines without harming embryos."  How could anyone be more up-to-date than that?

So far my reactions to these remarkable events are mixed.  On the one hand, I admire the tenacity and ingenuity of the scientists who are doing everything they can to get around the ethical debates and the restrictions by President Bush they prompted.  On the other hand, their impressive and successful efforts, which may not have occurred were it not for the ethical controversies, strike me as only postponing the larger and more basic question:  What are we ethically permitted to do with our thousands of frozen embryos, or "pre-embryos" as many prefer to call them?

So far we have three primary alternatives.  One is to discard them.  Another is to find couples who are able and willing to adopt them. And a third is to "store them indefinitely."  A fourth alternative gives me pause.  This is to refuse to discard any frozen embryos but to allow them to be transferred to another fertility clinic where that will.

There is some precedence even for this, however.  For many years some physicians who have declined for ethical reasons to do certain procedures have referred their patients to other competent doctors who will.  Some physicians who will not perform abortions do this with clear consciences, for example.

Using the terms in their most literal meaning, I find it helpful to distinguish between "possible" human persons and "potential" ones even though we often use these words interchangeably.  I reserve the term "potential" for (1) ova that (2) have been fertilized by sperm and (3) have successfully implanted in a human uterus or, perhaps eventually, its artificial substitute.

By themselves sperm and ova are "possible" but not "potential" persons because they lack the inherent power to continue through the pregnancy.  I would say the same thing about a fertilized ovum that has not successffully implanted.  It, too, is a "possible" but not a "potential" human person.

This is why I have no unconditional moral objection to IUDs or other contraceptive measures that hamper implantation.  And this is why I have no categorical objection to acquiring stem cells from microscopic pre-embryos before they have implanted.  But the discussion continues!

Hitchens, Christopher. "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever." Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2007. xxvi - 499 pages.

At the Melbourne airport on the way home from Adelaide where I attended a conference at the University of South Australia, and spent some time with my wife's family, I purchased this anthology and I'm glad I did.  I'm still reading it and will probably continue doing so for some time, selecting this or that as I see fit.

It is a remarkably comprehensive and convenient collection of material by thoughtful nonbelievers.  It includes things from legendary figures such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, Marx, Darwin and Freud.  It also offers reflections by some of the most eloquent and energetic doubters of our time:  Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and Hitchens himself. 

I strongly recommend it as a useful resource for all who are interested in religious belief, whether pro or con.  Although it offers few new arguments, it is a handy compendium of the existing ones.

Hitchens' emotional intensity exudes from his "Introduction" to the book as a whole as a well as from his shorter ones to particular authors.  On his first page, with many similar outbursts to come, he refers to religious beliefs and practices with expressions such as "useless prayers," "bogus 'miracles," "idiotic ceremonies of hysterical thanksgiving, "primitive stupidities and "old superstitions."  He depicts the writers with whom he agrees as "great" (Dennett) authors of "elegant contributions" (Shermer) who write with "courage and humor and intelligence in the face of dumb and sinister religiosity" (Dawkins).

We usually tiptoe around such excess in order not to disturb talented but troubled people.  We should take Hitchens more seriously than that, however.  Although he is more shrill than most, his voice is representative of a growing number of citizens who are alarmed.  Most of these are unbelievers, but quite a few are believers. I am a member of the second group. 

We believers know that we can flourish with unbelievers who laugh at us but do us no greater harm.  We cannot survive with other people of faith who would compel all of us to believe and do what they require.

This is why I share the concerns of Hitchens and his comrades even though I disagree with their atheistic conclusions.  We live in an era of increasing religious strife despite, or perhaps because of, the powerful secularizing forces of the last several centuries.  These developments should bother all of us. 

Hitchens and his colleagues would probably be nonbelievers in more favorable times; however, I doubt that their atheism would be as devout and fervent.  Eschewing the still small voice, they scream "Beware!" "Look out!" "Danger ahead!"  We should all take heed.

There is something these atheists know but perhaps do not take seriously enough.  This is that we human beings are "pattern-making mammals," to use Hitchens' apt expression. 

One of the ways we differ from other animals is that we conceive the most comprehensive accounts of all things that we can and then we pinpoint our little lives within them so as to give us some sense of who we are, what we should admire [worship!], how we should live, when we are out of line and whether we can do anything about it.

Providing comprehensive schemes in which we meaningfully locate ourselves is the primary business of religion.  Explaining unusual events, advocating this or that deity or gluing societies together isn't.  Neither is some combination of these.  Serving the needs of "pattern-making mammals" by mythos creation is what religion is all about.  Some religions do it better than others, all things considered.

It will not do to tell people again and again that their lives have no purpose other than what they can give them, that there are no standards of right and wrong other than what they prefer, and that there is no future other than what they can create. 

Even this is an implicit religion or mythos, of course; however, it is one that has very little staying power.  One exception might be the earliest form of Buddhism that invites us to embrace total meaninglessness and inescapable suffering and gives us ways to cope.  But even it was not able to remain this austere among the masses for very long.

In saying this I am not trying to promote any particular mythos or religion even though I am a Christian of sorts.  Because I believe that they rest upon a false dichotomy, I am not even holding out for the usual forms of supernaturalism.  I am only trying to depict human life as I think it actually is.  The horrific failure of every society so far that insisted by the force of arms upon complete secularism supports my claims, I believe.

Let us say it again:  The antidote to bad religion is not no religion but good religion.

If faced with the necessity of choosing between absolutely no religion or mythos at all, on the one hand, or religious fanaticism, on the other, most people will choose the second and some of them will be very bright.  And yes, I do use the term "bright" advisedly.

Hitchens and company rightly criticize much religious belief and practice and it easy to find in them an abundance of credulity and cruelty.  So far, so good.  Yet this is not enough. 

They or others who share their convictions must also propose some explicit comprehensive scheme and place our lives within it .  They must offer their own religion or mythos so that we can compare it with others. 

We are doomed if we try to live without any at all.