Beckwith's Defending Life [SK]

Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice
Francis J. Beckwith, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 312 pages.

I intend to blog through this entire book.

However, my posts are not a substitute for reading it. They are only designed to help readers track the major themes and arguments. My guess is that I’ll make between 10 and 12 posts on the book, though I may do more. Given my Fall speaking schedule, postings will be semi-regular and no doubt I will fail to treat some sections of the text as thoroughly as I should.

This is a book for careful thinkers. Though Frank believes he successfully refutes his critics (and I agree he does), he treats them charitably and takes their arguments seriously. He even thanks them up front (in the acknowledgments section) for helping him refine his own case. Among those thanked are David Boonin, Dean Stretton, Michael Tooley, and even Peter Singer. Classy.

Beckwith’s primary purpose is to provide a thorough defense of the pro-life position and its grounding in the “substance view” of human persons—a view he claims best explains human equality. He writes: “This book is, in a sense, then, not really a book about abortion, but rather, a book about human equality.” Frank contends that the larger metaphysical question—who are we?—should be answered by enlarging our definition of the human family to include the unborn. His secondary purpose is to examine the relationship between abortion and law, politics, and public discourse.

The pro-life argument Frank defends can be outlined as follows:

1. The unborn entity, from the moment of conception, is a full-fledged member of the human community.
2. It is prima facie morally wrong to kill any member of that community.
3. Every successful abortion kills an unborn entity, a full-fledged member of the human community.
4. Therefore, every successful abortion is prima facie morally wrong.

By “full-fledged member of the human community” (premise #1), Frank means that just like you and I have a natural right to life, so do the unborn. Thus, depriving them of that life requires the same strict justification needed for killing a 10-year old or any other human being. Note that Frank is not arguing we can never take unborn human life, only that it’s prima facie wrong to do so. That last point is a key distinction, one often missed by some abortion-advocates who insist pro-lifers are inconsistent for opposing elective abortion but not opposing the death penalty, the killing of animals, or war. In this case, the abortion-advocate is attacking a straw man: The pro-life position is not that it’s always wrong to take human life. Our view is that it’s always wrong to take human life without justification, and we believe (for good reason) that elective abortion does just that.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with moral reasoning, the law, and politics. Part 2 is the core of Frank’s case for the pro-life view, which includes both the scientific and philosophic considerations. Part 3 takes on cloning and embryonic stem-cell research.

The thrust of the text is philosophical and jurisprudential rather than religious. In each case, the arguments presented pass the test of public reason. That’s not because he thinks theology doesn’t count as real knowledge (indeed, he argues elsewhere it does). Rather, he’s cutting-off secular critics who unjustly dismiss pro-life arguments with the wand of "faith"--which they define as non-rational and subjective.

Frank sums up the current controversy this way: “At the end of the day, the abortion debate is about who and what we are and whether we can know it.” Having been well-schooled by Frank (and Greg Koukl), I start my own pro-life presentations by saying that our nation is having a huge argument over two key questions that will impact our kids and grandkids. First, we’re arguing over the question is truth true or is it merely a matter of personal taste, like choosing one’s favorite flavor of ice-cream? Second, we’re arguing over what makes humans valuable in the first place: Are we valuable for what we are intrinsically or only valuable for what we can do instrumentally?

Frank’s book speaks persuasively to both of those questions.

Table of Contents:

Part 1: Moral Reasoning, Law, and Politics

Chapter 1: Abortion and Moral Argument
Chapter 2: The Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, and Abortion Law
Chapter 3: Abortion, Liberalism, and State Neutrality

Part 2: Assessing the Case for Abortion Choice and Against Human Inclusiveness

Chapter 4: Science, the Unborn, and Abortion Methods
Chapter 5: Popular Arguments: Pity, Tolerance, and Ad Hominem
Chapter 6: The Nature of Humanness and Whether the Unborn Is a Moral Subject
Chapter 7: Does it Really Matter Whether the Unborn is a Moral Subject? The Case from Bodily Rights

Part 3: Extending and Concluding the Argument

Chapter 8: Cloning, Bioethics, and Reproductive Liberty
Chapter 9: Conclusion: A Case for Human Inclusiveness

Editorial Reviews / Endorsements:

"By a masterful marshalling of the pertinent arguments and a civil engagement with the counter-arguments, Beckwith makes a convincing case for law and social policy based on reason and natural rights rather than the will to power."
Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-in-Chief, First Things

"Like a superhero fighting on hostile turf with one arm tied behind his back, Francis J. Beckwith confronts every argument ?- popular, legal, and philosophical ?- that comes out against the pro-life position and fends them off one by one with steadfast rationality and exuberant invention. Between punches, drawing on the science of embryology and on philosophical anthropology, he develops a gracious and luminous case for the simple goodness of human life and the basic equality of all members of the human community from the moment of conception. Readers will judge for themselves whether or not he delivers a knock-out, but after working through Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice, no one can honestly hide behind such conceits as that all educated people support abortion, that nothing but blind faith rejects abortion rights, or that we are faced with a tragic choice between intelligence and life."
James R. Stoner, Jr., Louisiana State University

"Using an argument rooted in nondiscrimination and equality of persons, Beckwith deftly combines the analytical tools of philosophy, jurisprudence, and science to construct a brilliant case for governmental protection of the unborn. Critics will have difficulty refuting the logical conclusion that emerges from his basic premises."
Carol Swain, Vanderbilt University

"Francis Beckwith’s Defending Life directly confronts, with careful analysis of specific texts, a wide variety of arguments made by prominent scholars who favor abortion rights, including Judith Thomson, David Boonin, Dean Stretton, Eileen McDonagh, Paul Simmons, and Stuart Rosenbaum. Those who read the book may not agree with Beckwith, but they will have no ground to complain that he has not taken the arguments on the other side seriously, since the book is a sustained analysis and critique of the most important arguments in defense of abortion rights. It is often said that the anti-abortion position is fundamentally religious. Defending Life, however, provides a comprehensive and sophisticated philosophical defense of the position – too often given short shrift in academia – that abortion involves the deliberate, unjustifiable killing of a member of the human community. It is an invaluable contribution to debate on this central social and political issue."
Christopher Wolfe, Marquette University

"As the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the ban on partial birth abortion and the controversy over stem cell research make clear, the issues surrounding respect for life will continue at the forefront of American politics in the twenty-first century. Professor Beckwith’s new book makes an important contribution to these debates. Defending Life is, and is likely to remain for a long time, the most thorough and detailed statement of the pro-life position. It is well-written and learned; the author’s command of the relevant literatures, both legal and philosophic, is impressive."
Jean M. Yarbrough, Bowdoin College

Amazon Book Description:

Defending Life is the most comprehensive defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published. It is sophisticated, but still accessible to the ordinary citizen. Without high-pitched rhetoric or appeals to religion, the author offers a careful and respectful case for why the prolife view of human life is correct. He responds to the strongest prochoice arguments found in law, science, philosophy, politics, and the media. He explains and critiques Roe v. Wade, and he explains why virtually all the popular prochoice arguments fail. There is simply nothing like this book.

About the Author
Francis J. Beckwith is Associate Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies, Baylor University, where he teaches in the departments of philosophy and political science and the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. A 2002-2003 Madison Research Fellow in the Politics Department at Princeton University, he is a graduate of Fordham University (Ph.D., philosophy) and the Washington University School of Law, St. Louis (M.J.S.), where he won the CALI Award for academic excellence in the Reproductive Control Seminar. His more than a dozen books include Is Statecraft Soulcraft? Christianity and Politics (forthcoming); To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (2004); Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment and the Challenge of Intelligent Design (2003); Do the Right Thing: Readings in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy, Second Edition (2002); and The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement (2002), which was a finalist for the Gold Medallion Award in theology and doctrine. With interests in jurisprudence, politics, philosophy of religion, and public policy, Professor Beckwith has published in a wide variety of academic journals including the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Journal of Social Philosophy, International Philosophical Quarterly, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, American Journal of Jurisprudence, Journal of Medical Ethics, Public Affairs Quarterly, Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, Social Theory & Practice, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Christian Bioethics, Nevada Law Journal, Journal of Law & Religion, and Philosophia Christi.

For part 2 of this review, go here.

Science, Faith, and Stem Cells: More on Human Beings (Part 3) [Serge]

For others in this series, click here.

Eve Herold, author of the book Stem Cell Wars, also seems confused regarding the correct scientific definition of an organism of our species. As I will show, this is odd because even pro-abortion choice sources that she uses acknowledge the scientific truth that the individual life of a human being begins at conception. They also acknowledge that the human embryo is a complete, albeit immature human being.

In the 7th chapter of her book, Herold attempt to make the oft-repeated assertion that an embryo is less than human because so many of them die naturally without implanting. That is worth its own post, but I wish to focus on her confusion about the term human being:

Some people believe they [human embryos] are equivalent to living human beings. (p119.)

The idea that human life begins with a single lightning strike at conception has had a powerful influence on both politics and religion. Extraordinary efforts are being made by conservative politicians at every level of government to formalize the status of the embryo as a full-fledged human being. (p120)

Those darn conservatives having the gall to look into an embryology text for their scientific information. Ironically, Herold quotes a pro-abortion choice book to help her point that embryos are somehow not human because many of them die naturally. On p123, she states :

In their acclaimed book The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy, biologist Harold Morowitz and physicist James Trefil note that...

Obviously, she is impressed by their scientific credentials to quote them. Morowitz and Trefil's book deserves a month worth of posts, but I do believe they got some things right. In fact, on p16, they answer Herold's question about a human being:

In common usage, the term human being is often used as if it were synonymous with person or soul. "Abortion is murder" and "Abortion kills human beings" are used as equivalent statements. This usage is unfortunate, because the term has a precise meaning in biology. In biology, an entity is a human being if it is a member of the species Homo Sapiens. In this sense, the term carries no religious or legal connotations. It is simply a statement that the organism meets certain anatomical and genetic criteria...

In the precise language of the biological sciences, the correct way to refer to a fetus is as a developmental stage of the species Homo Sapiens. In this context, one can say that a human being exists from conception on, but it does not follow that that human being is a person or has a soul.

These pro-abortion choice authors, in the writings of their book specifically designed to support abortion rights, agree with me. Whether or not a certain entity is a human being is completely within the confines of science. It is a testable, empirically supported scientific fact that a human embryo is a human being. Other non-scientific terms such as "personhood" or "soul" cannot be verified by science.

Herold must be blinded by her own ideology to not understand this basic fact. She wants us to base our human value on the faith-based terminology of "personhood", yet she denies simple scientific facts.

Lastly, I know that Herold knows better because I personally told her so in a panel discussion we had regarding ESCR a few years ago. I'll try to find that soundbite, but in the meanwhile here's another one from the discussion.

What's the Real Joke? [SK]

Well now, the chattering classes are all upset that Fred Thompson stiffed the GOP debate in New Hampshire for a spot with Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show."

“Campaigns should be more than 30-second ads,” New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen said. “In New Hampshire, Republicans earn their votes by interacting with voters...I’m very disappointed that Fred Thompson deliberately scheduled his announcement in order to avoid this debate.”

National Review's David Freddoso asked Thompson's campaign directly: "Why did he opt to appear on a comedy show instead of coming to the presidential debate?

The answer is easy. These so-called debates are no less a joke than Leno's show. Difference is, Jay is funny. Candidates posturing for 40-second soundbites are not.

Seriously, do you really think we hear much in the way of substantial content at these exchanges? It's mostly about who looks best and who escapes without a visual metldown. Instead of thought-provoking questions followed by carefully reasoned answers, we get carefully scripted soundbites from candidates terrified of screwing up.

I'm not blaming the candidates--they're only doing what they must to get elected. My beef is with the medium of television itself. As Neil Postman points out in Amusing Ourselves to Death, television news--though it presents itself as serious content--is really about entertainment. The candidates know this. They're being judged as entertainers, not leaders. Instead of asking who sounded most reasonable, the big question of the night is who looked most presidential?

Lincoln sure didn't in his day. The American people learned about him by listening to (and reading about) his seven-hour and later three-hour debates with Douglas. Each man spoke in language that would be largely incomprehensible to a television audience in 2007. That's the difference between a book culture and an image-based one.

In short, in a culture whose primary epistemology is television, why not announce your bid for the world's most serious job on a joke show?

It's no more of one than the debate was...with a ton more viewers.

Dr. D. James Kennedy Has Died [SK]

You can view a time-line of his life here.

His death is a huge loss for the pro-life cause. Dr. Kennedy preached a cross-centered gospel AND systematically encouraged his listeners to engage the culture on pro-life issues. Anecdotally, I will tell you that's a rare mix in reformed circles today.

If you think I'm overstating my case by calling his death a huge loss for pro-lifers, consider these questions:

1. Outside of John Piper, can you name one pastor of a large, well-known reformed church that systematically encourages his people to be culturally engaged on pro-life issues AND who chastises his fellow pastors for ignoring abortion?

2. Can you name one pastor of a large reformed church that sees to it his people are trained to defend pro-life views in the public square with people who are unchurched?

3. Take a guess: If you administered a pop-quiz to your congregation using the following 5 questions, would the results suggest your church is well-informed, somewhat informed, or largely ignorant on abortion?

--For how many months of pregnancy is abortion legal in the U.S.?
--Are you confident that you can defend the pro-life position with un-churched co-workers and friends?
--What is the pro-life argument on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research?
--Can you persuasively summarize it in 45 seconds or less?
--Can you do it without appealing to Scripture, using arguments a secular critic cannot dismiss?

I have a hunch the quiz alone would reveal the sorry state Dr. Kennedy sought to address. Thankfully, he spoke to each of those questions during the course of his preaching ministry.

Question is, how many influential AND cross-centered preachers will rise to fill the vacancy left by Dr. Kennedy?

Michael Gazzaniga Is Intellectually Dishonest [SK]

Serge,
Pardon me for reposting what follows (it originally appeared before I accidentally deleted the LTI Blog late last year!), but you've got me all worked up over Gazzaniga. As you correctly point out, he wants to position himself as a neutral scientist while he hoodwinks us with his speculative meataphysics. His response to President Bush's 2006 State of the Union Address (regarding the President's remarks on cloning) is a case in point. It's laced with his own personal views dressed up as science. Below is what I said back then.

In today's New York Times, we get yet another cloning puff piece, this time by Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth and member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

Gazzaniga makes his intentions clear up front: He's out to correct President Bush's (and the public's) "nonsensical" concept of human life:

It has been weeks since President Bush's State of the Union speech, and I have not heard any outcry over his policy statement on cloning: "Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms." I can only guess that this means the public doesn't care, or doesn't understand what Mr. Bush means by this, or agrees with his nonsensical concept of what "human" means, or that somehow the stem cell scandal in South Korea has led to widespread agreement that we should just give up on such research. Any of these possibilities would be a mistake, not just for American science, but for the very human life the president seeks to protect.

Presumably, what Gazzaniga finds so nonsensical is the pro-life view of human value that was implied (though not defended) in the President's speech--namely, that 1) Humans have value in virtue of the kind of thing they are rather than because of some function they perform, and 2) you and I are identical to the embryonic human beings we once were--meaning that although you were once small as an embryo, your small size and lack of development did not change the kind of thing you were. You were the same being then as you are now. To put it simply, You didn't evolve from an embryo; you once were an embryo.

We're then told, in part, why the President's take is nonsense:

The president's view is consistent with the reductive idea that there is an equivalence between a bunch of molecules in a lab and a beautifully nurtured and loved human who has been shaped by a lifetime of experiences and discovery. His view is a form of the "DNA is destiny" story. Yet all modern research reveals that DNA must undergo thousands if not millions of interactions at both the molecular and experiential level to grow and develop a brain and become a person.

Notice the unsupported claims here. First, why should anyone suppose that being loved and nurtured, or having a lifetime of experiences, changes (or determines) the kind of thing one is? Is an abandoned day-old infant not a human being? What if he dies alone in the woods and is never nurtured by caring adults? (And if he lives only a day, he'll have few life experiences and no lifetime of discovery.) How would this sad state of affairs in anyway call into question the kind of being he is ontologically? At this point, I'm not even asking Gazzaniga to say whether a day-old infant or a day-old embryo has value; I just want to know how my loving something determines the kind of thing it is?

Second, why should we believe that brain development bestows value on a person? As usual with pro-cloning advocates, Gazzaniga does not tell us why development matters, nor does he say why certain value-giving properties are value-giving in the first place. True, he later appeals to one's immediate capacity to experience memories, loves, and hopes, but isn’t that just question-begging since the issue is whether one is a human subject even if one does not have memories, loves, and hopes? Newborns lack all of these qualities--Does it follow they are fitting subjects for destructive research?

Gazzaniga then says that it squares with our basic intuitions to accept that adults and children are people while clumps of cells in a petri dish are not:

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to observe that "human life is a gift from our creator — and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale." Putting aside the belief in a "creator," the vast majority of the world's population takes a similar stance on valuing human life. What is at issue, rather, is how we are to define "human life." Look around you. Look at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else? Most humans practice a kind of dualism, seeing a distinction between mind and body. We all automatically confer a higher order to a developed biological entity like a human brain. We do not see cells, simple or complex — we see people, human life. That thing in a petri dish is something else. It doesn't yet have the memories and loves and hopes that accumulate over the years.

For starters, this is sloppy science. Gazzaniga is making the rather elementary mistake of confusing parts with wholes. Living human embryos are not mere "hunks" of cells, but distinct, self-integrating organisms capable of directing their own maturation as members of the human species. Dr. Maureen Condic points out that embryos are living human beings "precisely because they possess the single defining feature of human life that is lost in the moment of death—the ability to function as a coordinated organism rather than merely as a group of living human cells." Condic, Assistant Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, explains the important distinction between clumps of cells and whole human embryos overlooked by Gazzaniga:

The critical difference between a collection of cells and a living organism is the ability of an organism to act in a coordinated manner for the continued health and maintenance of the body as a whole....Embryos are not merely collections of human cells, but living creatures with all the properties that define any organism as distinct from a group of cells; embryos are capable of growing, maturing, maintaining a physiologic balance between various organ systems, adapting to changing circumstances, and repairing injury. Mere groups of human cells do nothing like this under any circumstances."

As for Gazzaniga's own ad-hoc version of mind/body dualism, there's a host of problems with the idea of personhood coming into existence only after some degree of bodily development. One is that you end up saying things like "I came to be after my body came to be." Or, "I inhabit a body that was once an embryo."

Notice also that nowhere in his essay does Gazzaniga defend his metaphysical assumption that personhood is an accidental property rather than something intrinsic to the human subject. I wonder: Other than the embryos he’d like to arbitrarily exclude, has he ever met a living human body that wasn't a person? Have any of us? That’s the problem with so-called personhood arguments: They’re ad-hoc, arbitrary, and prove too much. For example, abortion-choicers Mary Ann Warren, Michael Tooley, and Peter Singer all concede that any argument used to disqualify the embryo as a person works equally well to disqualify the newborn.

Meanwhile, Gazzaniga's appeal to our intuitions-- "these embryos don't look like your relatives, do they?" (my paraphrase)-- is naive, though I agree that some people will not be impressed with a 2-week human embryo. For them, it’s counter-intuitive to suggest that something the size of a dot is a human being. But many others consider that same embryo and experience a very different intuition, one that tells them we should protect (not harm) the weakest members of the human family, regardless of their body size, location, or degree of development. The question now becomes which intuition is the naïve one, the pro-cloner's or the pro-lifer's? You can never resolve a conflict between two competing intuitions by merely describing our feelings about something. We must go back to the evidence. What do the facts of science say? What they say is that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. (Incidentally, a century ago many people thought it counterintuitive to suggest that slaves were human.) In short, intuitions are not infallible, though we’re justified believing them until presented with superior evidence. In this case, Gazzaniga's appeal to intuition does not refute the strongly evidenced claim for the humanity of the embryo; it merely side-steps it.

Next we get from Gazzaniga the same old tired distortions of fact we've heard before:

Calling human cloning in all its forms an "egregious abuse" is a serious mischaracterization. This makes it sound as if the medical community is out there cloning people, which is simply not true. The phrase "in all of its forms" is code, a way of conflating very different things: reproductive cloning and biomedical cloning.

Different? How so?

The alleged distinction between "bio-medical cloning" and "reproductive cloning" is totally misleading because all cloning is reproductive. So-called "reproductive" cloning means allowing the cloned human to be born alive. "Bio-medical" (or therapeutic) cloning means creating him for research, but killing him before birth. In either case, the act of cloning is exactly the same and results in a living human embryo. Remember: A cloned human being is created when the nucleus is removed from a human egg and replaced with genetic material from a donor. Once this occurs, the act of cloning is complete. After that, the only question is how we will treat the cloned human being—kill him for research or allow him to grow and develop.

Gazzaniga continues:

But in fact human cloning has not been attempted, nor is it in the works; so it's a theoretical ban in the first place, like banning marriage between robots. (emphasis mine)

Huh? Have we forgotten already Michael West at Advanced Cell Technology? Hwang Woo Suk in Korea ? True, both men made questionable claims about their research, but make no mistake: Both were attempting to clone human embryos. The only way to close your eyes to this is to assert that cloning isn't cloning unless you get an embryo you intend to cheerish rather than destroy.

Ironically, Gazzaniga praises New Jersey's cloning laws which make it legal to create a cloned embryo, implant it in a willing woman's womb, and then gestate it through the ninth month of pregnancy--as long as you kill it before birth, the point at which it magically becomes "a new human individual." Yes, the NJ law allows you use late-term (cloned) fetuses for spare parts-- which is why cloning opponents accurately dubbed it a "clone-and-kill" law.

And Gassaniga thinks this is a good use of public money?

He leaves us with two parting shots. First, we're reminded that 10 of the 17 members of the President's own bioethics council did not support a ban on bio-medical cloning. That's true and it's regrettable. But what Gazzaniga forgot to tell you is that the same council helped clarify the debate by avoiding the very doublespeak employed by Gazzaniga--namely, his contention that a cloned human embryo is not a human entity. On the council, with a few exceptions, even the supporters of cloning avoided such language. Second, he asserts that non-embryonic alternatives (presumably adult-stem cell treatments which qualify for federal funding) are a waste of time and money.

Hum...Last time I checked, adult stems cells were treating over 70 different illnesses/injuries while embryonic cells were treating none. Of course, it's ridiculous to claim embryo cells will never work, but it's even more ridiculous for Gassaniga to call current successes with adult cells a waste.

All in all, not a very persuasive piece.

Gazzaniga Redux [Serge]

I was going to move on, but I did want to point out one more thing about Gazzaniga's letter. This letter is instructive because it came out before we knew about Hwang's cloning fraud. In it, we can see the general attitude the "scientific community" had about policing their own. Gazzaniga has this to say about the "breakthrough" from Korea:

Now, two years later, the good scientists of South Korea have made a major advance in biomedical cloning. They have shown the world that careful and caring biomedical cloning, cloning that allows for the production of stem cells, which might lead to breathtaking remedies for horrible diseases, is possible.

He describes the Korean scientists as good, caring, and careful. I have no idea what evidence he had for this assertion, but as it turned out, he was about as wrong as one could be. In the very least, Hwang's group:

1) Lied about the number of eggs used in his experiments (they used over 2000).
2) Lied when they stated that no female member of the research team donated their eggs (they did).
3) Did not inform women donors of the risks of donating eggs. (16 of the women donors needed medical treatment for ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and 2 were hospitalized).
4) Lied in stating that they cloned a human embryo.
5) Lied in stating that they developed stem cell lines from a cloned embryo.

This is a short list. It is also important to note that there were 25 authors on these papers, many of which had to know about the unethical human experimentation and the lies, but did nothing to expose them.

Gazzaniga instantly gives scientists the benefit of the doubt, and simply assumes that ethical standards will be kept and reported data will be accurate. Many proponents of ESCR simply believe that "ethical oversight" committees will allow "ethical" research to occur via the self-policing mechanism. I suppose they want us to take their word by faith also.

Science, Faith, and Stem Cells: What is a Human Being? (Part 2) [Serge]

The term "human being" seems like a very easy one to define. The most scientific definition is that a human being is an individual organism of the species homo sapiens. This definition is supported by empirical evidence, can be tested, and withstands scrutiny.

However, scientists seem to be all too willing to ignore the scientific definition and to instead substitute it with one that is completely non-scientific. There are multiple examples of this, but this one by neurobiologist and member of the President's Council on Bioethics Michael Gazzaniga is very illustrative of this. This is from a letter to the journal Science shortly after Hwang first published (later retracted) his paper on human cloning.

Many people recognize that the human embryo, the entity that is created by the union of an egg and sperm, carries all the genetic information of a member of the human species. Thus, they call the embryo a human being. Of course, to develop into a human being, the embryo has to become implanted into the uterus of a woman and be allowed to develop. This potential to become a human being is what sticks in the minds of the supporters of the moral equivalence argument and this is why manipulations of embryos for anything but normal reproduction is not acceptable to them.

Looking at a minuscule ball of cells in a Petri dish, so small that it could rest on the head of a pin finds one hard pressed to think of it as a human being. After all, it has no brain or capacity to think and feel. The ball of cells has the potential if it was to be implanted into a woman but so do the egg and sperm ‘set’ before they meet. Why don’t we revere those entities? Well, it is argued, because they don’t have the full compliment of genetic material that could make up a human being. Those that see a bright line here, the line between an entity with the combined genetic material versus the uncombined entities, are forgetting the central discoveries of neuroscience and developmental psychology.

I could blog for a week on this. However, I wish to attempt to stick to the point. Gazzaniga does not accept that being an organism of our species is a sufficient condition for membership in the family of "human beings". In fact, he asserts at least four different conditions that are also necessary to be a human being. To be a "human being to Gazziniga" (HBG), a human organism must also:

1) Be in an environment where it can continue to develop
2) Be of a certain size and
3) Have a certain minimum amount of neural structures in place, which allow the capacity to "think" and "feel"
4) Look like something other than a "ball of cells".

At first, my tendency is to refute his assertions with the philosophical arguments that Scott has mentored me through. However, that misses the point here. Gazziniga is attempting to modify the scientific definition of a human being with one that has no basis in science. How are we to test whether or not a human being is a HBG based on where it currently resides? What is the scientifically testable number of cells that a human organism needs to be considered a HBG? Can that number be challenged and falsified by new evidence? How many neural structures, and what empirical evidence reveals that a human organism has reached HBG status? Not one of these assertions hold up to the scrutiny of science.

Gazziniga would have us believe that there are two subsets of human organisms. One set (the HBG) have acquired or shortly will acquire (which is another issue with his assertions) the accidental qualities that make it morally relevant, and the other set lacks some set of accidental qualities which means they don't count. This is not science. This is his ideology and philosophy regarding the moral value of human beings.

Lastly, how are we to test whether or not a certain human organism qualifies to be a HBG, and thus worthy of moral standing? We can't use science, because moral standing can't be seen in a microscope or separated in a test tube. It seems that Gazziniga would simply need to tell us himself. And we would be required to accept his answer, by faith.