Sidestepping for a moment the entire issue of when life begins and what obligation if any we have to bring every potential human life into being, this second-guessing of critical decisions involving patient care and scientific research reminds me of the Terri Schiavo media circus. A prominent spokesman at the time for other Christians, now-disgraced Congressman Tom Delay, expressed gratitude for Schiavo's vegetative state: "one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America" and to bring a "biblical world view" to America.
Now this same vocal minority, using similar sloppy logic, opposes a treatment they do not understand of someone who is not their loved one and root (pray?) for its failure. In effect, they are hoping for the prolonged paralysis and suffering of a living person out of fear it may encourage research that threatens potential life. I fail to see how this position is humane or pro-life.
Indeed, it reminds me of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where the pious of Jesus's day avoided alleviating the suffering of the man before them for abstract, deferred, and highly dubious religious reasons.
I have text-searched the Bible for embryonic stem cells and generated no hits, so am curious as to how such a cruel position can be justified on religious grounds anyway. Applying very broad prohibitions against terminating life cannot with any confidence be applied to all forms of potential life, especially those that could never have been dreamed of in the agrarian, relatively primitive society that created the Bible. I can understand intelligent adults disagreeing about these things, but it is intellectually dishonest to cover one argument in the cloak of religious certainty, certainly not to the level that justifies aborting this newly conceived medical research and treatment before it is fully viable.
If those with no medical or scientific training are confident enough to weigh in, based on what they heard, about the best way to treat patients suffering from spinal cord injuries, why stop there? What, for example, is the Vatican's opinion about the most effective chemotherapeutic agent to use in Stage IV breast cancer? Or which surgical procedure is most appropriate for removing an appendix? Does Father Hepburn prefer external beam or brachytherapy radiation therapy for Stage II prostate cancer?
If those questions sound ridiculously technical and inappropriate for a religious representative to address, then why is it any less inappropriate to assume that one has either the expertise or the moral standing to wade into such a complex field in such a selective way?
Father Hepburn was disingenuous when he claimed that his was not a religious position per se. His religious position seemed the only reason he was being interviewed at all, and so respectfully. I am sure there are many engineers and teachers and philosophy professors who have similar educational backgrounds and as much standing on this issue as Father Hepburn who were not invited for an on-camera interview.
At any rate, the vocal minority opposed to stem cell research IS highly correlated with although not strictly limited to religious affiliation (those who describe themselves as born again are somewhat more likely than those who describe themselves as Catholics to oppose stem cell research).
Nevertheless, 69% of Catholics in a recent Harris poll support stem cell research. This issue, like birth control and Copernican theory (I date myself, but I have a long historical memory), is another where the pronouncements of the hierarchy are out of step with the beliefs and practices of those in the pews who financially support them.
Of course the hierarchy of the Catholic church does not pretend to be a democratic organization in any sense, and certainly it's possible that most Catholics are wrong and the church leadership is right. But over time, overwhelming public opinion and scientific evidence do change church pronouncements.
Overwhelming opposition to the church's 1616 condemnation and excommunication of Galileo and its resultant loss of credibility led the church to reverse its insistence on a geocentric universe and allow Copernican theory, the stem cell research of its time, to be taught a few centuries later.
Church opposition to the rising tide of representative democracy and reflexive support of monarchy by this most traditional of institutions eventually softened. Voting in Italian elections is no longer seen as grounds for excommunication as it was at one perilous point in the late 19th century.
Attitudes towards Jews and women have softened over time to reflect changing cultural mores, and recently a more humane posture toward homosexuality seems to be in the works.
So we can progress and grow and change. I understand that Father Hepburn is in a particularly difficult position that even most of those he represents do not agree with. For all I know, he personally would rather not like the recipient of this stem cell treatment to suffer or die, but he is a loyal soldier and the Vatican has given him his marching orders.
But we are free to follow the dictates of our own conscience and to use our own reason. As Galileo, who remained a devout Catholic all his life, put it best:
- "I do not think it necessary to believe that the same God who gave us our senses, our speech, our intellect, would have put aside the use of these, to teach us instead such things as with our help we could find out for ourselves, particularly in the case of these sciences of which there is not the smallest mention in the Scriptures; and, above all, in astronomy, of which so little notice is taken that the names of none of the planets are mentioned. Surely if the intention of the sacred scribes had been to teach the people astronomy, they would not have passed over the subject so completely."
- - Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel, p. 65.
Indeed. Substitute biology for astronomy and stem cells for planets and he could have been writing to a modern audience. In many ways, he was.
No comments:
Post a Comment