Chapter 2: The Brave New World
I couldn’t help but feel nervous. The most famous interviewer in the world, Larry King, was about to interview me. I looked anxiously around the studio, so familiar to viewers of Larry King Live in more than 270 countries.
Well, I thought as the producer counted down, this is it. I’m ready.
I was well prepared. Two days earlier, one of the producers of Larry King Live had called to go over the sort of questions he’d ask. It both surprised and gladdened me that so many had to do with stem cell research — a topic I had been reading much on lately, especially since a spinal-cord-injured friend of mine was traveling to Lisbon, Portugal, to undergo an amazing spinal surgery that would use stem cells from her own nasal tissue. The success rate for the surgery was nothing short of miraculous. Former paraplegics were now walking — with braces, yes, but they were walking!
I had brushed up on my facts and felt ready to respond to Larry King’s every question about the wonderful new treatments and therapies coming on the scene. From the number of questions the producer asked on the issue, I felt certain that most of the hour would focus on stem cell research. And, yes, I was especially ready to answer questions about Christopher Reeve, the paralyzed former movie star who had become a global advocate for using human cloning and embryonic stem cells to find cures.
About halfway through the interview . . .
Larry King: “He [Reeve] thinks he’s going to walk.”
Joni: “That may very well happen, using incredible therapies . . . using adult stem cell research. It is absolutely amazing what is happening. Dr.Carlos Lima in Lisbon, Portugal, has helped restore bladder and muscle control to people suffering from paralysis, using stem cells from their own nasal tissue!”
I fully expected Mr. King to say, “Oh, really? Tell us more!” After all, for the first time, the world had the chance to hear about the impossible and the miraculous. The world could learn about the never-before-heard-of medical success story of spinal-cord-injured people regaining feeling and movement in their bodies, using adult-tissue therapies. I prepared to explain that one paralyzed woman treated by Dr. Lima with her own olfactory tissue was about to appear before a Senate subcommittee to present videos of herself walking with braces!
I expected my answers to bowl over my host; perhaps he’d regain enough composure to pepper me for more details. And really, my announcement should have prompted a few follow-up questions, at least — but no. He didn’t seem the least bit interested that paraplegics with spinal-cord injuries are on the verge of walking again. Instead, he took a different tack . . .
Larry King: “Everyone says it will be faster if embryonic is also used. Nancy Reagan is going to campaign strongly for that.”
I knew where he was going. It seemed clear Mr. King wanted to focus on the hotly emotional debate of embryonic stem cells. Didn’t he hear what I just said about people paralyzed like me, like Christopher Reeve, already regaining movement and feeling? I tried to steer his line of questioning back onto adult stem cell successes . . .
Joni: “Rather than focus on embryonic stem cells, I’m convinced we should channel what few and scarce resources there are into [adult] therapies which have the most promise, which are the most effective. Besides, stem cells from embryos can form tumors . . . there’s the problem with tissue rejection . . . it’s just not safe.”
He shrugged off my comments and, instead, asserted that problems always happen in the beginning. “That’s true,” I acknowledged, trying again to get him to hear just how far adult-tissue research already has advanced, “but right now, incredible therapies are happening with our own stem cells, whether from dental pulp, nasal tissue, or bone-marrow tissues.”
For the second time in two minutes, I had presented Larry King with the chance to provide his audience with a fascinating educational opportunity. Had he followed up — even skeptically demanding proof or examples — I could have told him about the forty-five diseases already being treated with adult-tissue therapies. I could have told him about human heart patients and people with Parkinson’s who are enjoying amazing degrees of recovery. I could even have mentioned that sickle-cell anemia now has a 95 percent cure rate using stem cells from umbilical cord blood.
But my host did not allow a worldwide audience to hear any of this. Rather, Mr. King wound up the line of questioning with “What’s the argument against using embryonic cells?” and an invitation for me to debate Christopher Reeve.
I don’t know why, but the media believes that stem cell medical advancements count only if they come from human embryos. The media and many politicians are convinced that it is the religious extremists and ignorant ideologues who stand in the way. They insist that cures for cancers and diseases are within reach and that we must start funding embryonic stem cell research and cloning if those cures are to happen.
Well . . . they are already happening.
It’s the intellectuals, politicians, media, and many more who are shortsighted. Myopic. Faced with the facts, they refuse to see — blind by their own choosing. So is our secular society. Call them postmodern men or just plain dull, they stubbornly refuse to see, let alone come to the light.
If one passage from the Word of God best describes this strange new world in which we find ourselves, it’s Matthew 13:13 – 15. Jesus makes a telling observation:
Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “Youwill be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be everseeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has becomecalloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear withtheir ears, and understand with their hearts.”
This is our brave new world, a world where people place their political views before the clear and present facts. It is a world where an irrational worldview sets the agenda.
And it’s the world Jesus Christ bids us enter. He tells us in Matthew 5:13 – 16, “You are the salt of the earth. . . . You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men.” And as you do, “they will see,” it says in the last part of verse 16. Blind eyes, deaf ears, and calloused hearts will be changed.
But still, we need a clear ethical grid, something that will show us who we should be and what we should be doing in matters of science, health, and life. To what shall we look? The teachings of Scripture are the final court of appeals for ethics. Human reason and tradition may aid moral reflection, but the Bible serves as the bottom line. If we believe the Bible is indeed the Word of God, that it’s the only reliable and infallible rule of faith, then it must be the highest authority for morals. By understanding the nature of God, man, good, and evil, the Bible provides a basic worldview within which we can grasp what we should believe in matters of science, health, and life.
In short, we must courageously move forward as a God-fearing people, possessing a Bible-based wisdom that will show us how to put our hands around everything from in vitro fertilization to the bizarre world of trans-humanity. We need to see the brave new world as Jesus sees it. So . . .
Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or swerve from them. Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.Esteem her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you. (Proverbs 4:5 – 8)
JONI
With the dawn of the twenty-first century, we stand on the threshold of the brave new world. The debates about cloning and the use of embryos for stem cell research have awakened many of us to the special challenge of life in the third millennium. We know that there will be amazing advances in technology; we do not know whether our morals will keep up. Technology can serve wonderful purposes: to feed the starving, heal the sick, and spread the good news of Jesus. It also can give evil men and women (and, equally worrying, foolish men and women) enormous power over others and the world at large.
For a long time, thoughtful people have debated the merits of the two most influential books ever written about the future. They are alike in one respect: they offer visions of a world that has gone profoundly wrong.
TWO VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
George Orwell’s 1984 sets out a vision of political oppression and control that foresees the triumph of technology in the service of dictatorship. Its theme: “Big Brother is watching you.”
By contrast, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World offers a more subtle nightmare in which biotechnology has brought about a world where pain and suffering have been almost entirely alleviated — at the cost of everything that makes life worth living. It is hellish but, from the outside, looks like heaven.
In the closing years of the twentieth century, it became obvious which vision of the future was right. As Soviet Communism collapsed and the power of dictators crumbled around the world, scientists in an unknown lab in Scotland announced they had cloned Dolly the sheep — and the biotech revolution began. We have reason to feel grateful that Orwell seems to have been wrong. In the age of cloning, we have reason to be fearful that Huxley may have been right.
The challenge of human cloning confronts the world with a special opportunity. This is our chance to decide that human dignity always comes first, and that biotechnology — like all technology — must serve human beings and respect the dignity of those created in the image of God. The amazing benefits it promises always come mingled with threats.
The closing years of the twentieth century showed that George Orwell’s totalitarian vision of a world under dictatorship did not represent the human future. It lies in our hands at the start of the twenty-first to ensure that, under God, Aldous Huxley is also proved wrong. But to do so will require all our efforts. In our generation, the key decisions will be made to shape the world of tomorrow.
Excerpt from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. . . .
“And this,” said the Director opening the door, “is the Fertilizing Room.”
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director’s heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse’s mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.
“I shall begin at the beginning,” said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. “These,” he waved his hand, “are the incubators.” And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. “The week’s supply of ova. Kept,” he explained, “at blood heat; whereas the male gametes,” and here he opened another door, “they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes.” Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.
President George W. Bush made the point well. In April of 2002, he invited both of us, together with a group of Christian leaders and our secular allies, to the White House to hear him call for a comprehensive ban on human cloning. We won’t easily forget his speech. Listen to these words:
Science has set before us decisions of immense consequence. We can pursue medical research with a clear sense of moral purpose or we can travel without an ethical compass into a world we could live to regret. Science now presses forward the issue of human cloning. How we answer the question of human cloning will place us on one path or the other.
As the president could clearly see, this is the benchmark debate of the biotech century.
We live in an age of technology, but technology is not new. Even the most primitive human societies used tools to make things and grow crops. The Industrial Revolution led to the slow replacement of an agricultural way of life with factories that manufactured first cloth, then later consumer products such as the automobile. Western countries have now moved into economies dominated by services, and information technology has begun to have a huge impact on how we lead our lives.
BIOTECHNOLOGY AND “DOMINION”
OVER OURSELVES
While technology is not new, in this past generation technology has begun to change its focus. No longer is it aimed simply at the world around us. It has begun to turn its attention to us, ourselves, our human nature itself.
In 1978 we saw the birth of the world’s first “test-tube baby,” Louise Brown. Then, less than twenty years later, Dolly was born, the world’s first clone. Technology now has a new, sinister twist. Technology is the story of our “conquest of nature.” Now we have added human nature to “nature.” The long story of our gaining “dominion” — right from the start one of our human tasks (Genesis 1:28 KJV) — has taken a fresh turn. We are working on getting “dominion” over ourselves. What does that mean? It’s a question to which we will continually return.
But some things are becoming clear. When we formerly used the word dominion about people, we meant one of two things: dominion over other people, and dominion over ourselves. When we speak of dominion over other people, we mean politics and government, how we should rule ourselves in our villages and towns and nations, perhaps dominion over other nations. And the key to that question, recognized increasingly all over the world, is to treat people like people. That is basically what we mean by “human rights.”
The idea of human rights comes down to us from the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the period when some key intellectual leaders, for the first time in many hundreds of years, decided to look at human life apart from God — they cut him out of the picture and focused exclusively on humans. The history of the past two hundred years has largely been the story of our wrestling with that idea, and much of what is good and bad in the modern world came out of this fresh focus on what it means to be human.
On the plus side of the ledger, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and “human rights” as a key idea in international law today, focus on human dignity, even if the statements do not explicitly recognize that our dignity finds its roots in God.
Sadly, there is more to be said on the negative side. The basic assumption of the modern world is that if you wish to believe in God, you should keep it to yourself; education, politics, the media, all operate as if he were not there.
The flowering of democracy and the idea that every person has rights owe everything to the impact of Christians and their Bible on Western culture. Our culture has been deeply influenced by the Bible’s teaching that human beings — all human beings — are created in the image of God. This point is vital: you must treat people as people. That’s the message that led to the end of slavery and the rise of the civil rights movement, and is also the message we still give to dictators and totalitarian states. It’s the standard we in the West seek to live up to. God calls the nations to account for their treatment of his human creatures, whether in the killing fields of Cambodia or Rwanda. People must be treated like people.
It seems obvious, yet at the heart of current developments in biotech the distinction between people and things is getting increasingly blurred.
Second, we used to speak of “dominion” over ourselves in moral terms. Two generations ago a spate of books appeared with titles like “Self-mastery.” The point was simple: To live well, humans need to exercise self-control. Christians ought to know much more about this than unbelievers because they understand the significance of sin. You need to have “dominion” over yourself if you are going to fulfill your potential and live a good life. It alarms many of us that today’s children seem to be so undisciplined, because we know this will make it so much harder for them in later life to discipline themselves. This kind of “dominion” is also appropriate to human beings, since it treats them as people — as moral beings.
In light of this, we have to recognize that the threat posed by every one of the technologies we are about to examine is its tendency to blur the distinction between people and things — and, sometimes, to treat people as objects. This process has been called “commodification” — to treat someone as a commodity.
HUMANS AS COMMODITIES
Let’s look at an example taken from a technology that has existed for half a century. Until recently, almost everyone agreed that the only ethical way to use human organs for transplants was for them to be “donated” as gifts, either from a live donor who could spare a kidney or some other part of the body, or from the relatives of someone who had died. Usually, the donor is dead by the time of the transplant. Most countries protect human organs from being bought and sold, although fees change hands to cover costs, and commercial organizations act as brokers — which underlines the “commodity” metaphor. Organs and other body tissue can easily be treated as commodities, even though ethicists have worked hard to protect them from becoming mere property that someone owns and can therefore trade.
Two big changes have taken place in recent years. One is the rise of an illegal international trade in organs and, alongside it, a slow change in attitudes toward payment. The second shift brings us directly to biotech and the new ethics agenda, for it involves the unambiguous sale and purchase of the most precious of all parts of the human body, sperm and eggs — the “gametes” — the reproductive cells that enable us to have children and that carry our genetic fingerprint. As we shall see in depressing detail in chapter 7, human eggs and semen are traded freely on the Internet. Some other countries regulate or ban such activities, but in the US there is a free-for-all.
The shift toward a trade in organs and the rapid development of a marketplace for eggs and sperm offer grim examples of the way our culture is moving. And they show how easy it is for us to smudge the distinction between people and property as the new biotech issues come on stream.
Commodities are, by definition, “raw materials” — things out of which we generally make something else. Even tea and coffee go through processes that turn a leaf or a bean into the dry powder that in due course gets infused with hot water to give us a beverage. That takes our use of the “commodification” image to another level. And it is in this sense that human nature is in the process of being turned, definitively, into a commodity.
Alongside the treatment of our body parts as “things” like tea and tin, our bodies as a whole are coming to be seen as merely complex machines. That theme runs through all of these new technologies. We are turning ourselves, creatures made by God, into creatures that we have made. When we use the word creature, we see afresh what we are doing. A creature is created, made by someone else. It is not just that we are treating ourselves like things; by seeking to take control not only of reproduction (that’s what cloning does) but the design process itself (through genetics and other technologies), we become our own creators.
The builders of the Tower of Babel moved in exactly that arrogant direction. They wanted to make a name for themselves. By modern standards, their technology seems as pathetic as their aim. We know better. We have conquered the atom on the macroscale — think of the cyclotron that speeds up atomic particles at the Fermi Lab near Chicago, a piece of technology 1.3 miles across. We have mapped the human genome. We are devoting billions of dollars to nanotechnology to enable us to manipulate matter atom by atom. And we are building, not with slabs of sun-dried mud brick or quarried stone, but with the infinitely complex, microscopic, living stones that we have quarried from the human genome. We aim, not merely to build a tower that reaches to heaven, but a body confined to the earth. Unlike the builders of the tower, we don’t just want to make a name for ourselves.We want to make ourselves. What the builders of Babel began, we may soon be in a position to finish.
ABORTION AND AMERICAN CULTURE
It will be many years before we finally understand the impact that abortion has had on our culture: millions of babies aborted, a generation mutilated by the wanton death of its children and siblings. Already some of its economic effects have been calculated — cutting the birthrate and making Western nations increasingly dependent on immigration at a time when, it is now widely agreed, the “population bomb” was a hoax.
Yet when the history books finally get written, two huge impacts of abortion will emerge that today go largely unnoticed. And, taken together, they go to the heart of the problem addressed in this book.
THE FREE-FIRE ZONE
First, abortion has placed the unborn child in a free-fire zone. Whatever the motives of those who favor it and have argued in defense of “abortion rights,” Roe v. Wade has drawn a veil over the human dignity of unborn human life. It has opened the way to something very different from abortion, yet which has the same effect as killing the developing child: the use of human embryos in experiments and as sources for experimental material such as stem cells. Pro-choice campaigners never had this in mind. Some of them are happy about it; others (as we will see later) are not.
Thirty years of liberal abortion in America has declared life before birth off-limits to the protections of human dignity. Even pro-choice bioethics experts, who in the past opposed embryo experiments, have shifted their ground in the face of the fashionable attractions of embryonic stem cell research. The fact that an unborn child’s life may be ended by his or her mother’s choice, whatever her reasoning and situation — thus rendering the states powerless to intervene — has profoundly shaped the way in which we perceive the unborn. The momentum to declare early embryos suitable for experiments has proved nearly unstoppable.
The best example of this corruption of the American imagination became evident when “pro-life” Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican of Utah) decided, first, that because “life begins in the womb not the refrigerator,” “spare” in vitro embryos may be used for experiments; and, second, that cloned embryos are not the same thing as embryos that resulted from fertilization and can therefore be manufactured for the purpose.
Roe has declared unborn human life a free-fire zone.
PRO-LIFE VERSUS PRO-CHOICE?
Second, abortion has radically divided “pro-life” and “pro-choice” advocates. Of course, these groups have wrestled mightily since Roe and made “the right to life” and “abortion rights” the most potent slogans in American culture. Abortion also has largely powered the entry of evangelicals and fundamentalists into public life, including such organizations as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. An earlier generation of evangelical leaders had taken a softer view of abortion and treated it as a generally “Catholic” issue, like contraception. The move into firmer opposition against abortion proved an engine of evangelical – Catholic cooperation. On the political front, abortion has emerged for many Christians as the defining issue of their political engagement.
By the same token, support for “abortion rights” has proved a powerful organizing idea among progressive feminists, for whom “reproductive rights” have taken center stage in their understanding of the rights and dignity of women. Central to those rights has been abortion on demand. Any perceived limitation — through such initiatives as parental notification in the case of minors — has been strongly opposed.
Of course, we have both pro-life political progressives and pro-choice political conservatives. In general, the pro-life position has been on the defensive among Democrats, with leaders such as Al Gore moving from pro-life to pro-choice positions. At the same time, the libertarianism that affects both sides of the spectrum has made persistent gains on the right. Of course, not all evangelicals are politically conservative, and African American evangelicals tend to vote Democratic.
The point is this: the sudden emergence of the biotech agenda with the cloning controversy has shed fresh light on these broad social divisions, because pro-life and pro-choice have discovered they have something in common. Richard Doerflinger, who represents the Catholic bishops in these debates, gave testimony in favor of a ban on cloning at a House of Representatives committee hearing. Next to him, making the same case, sat Judy Norsigian, editor of the famous pro-choice feminist book Our Bodies, Ourselves. And further down the line sat Professor Stuart Newman, a founding member of the Council for Responsible Genetics, an explicitly pro-choice group of scientists who have been critical of many aspects of biotech and who oppose all experimental use of human embryos.
When Congresswoman Diane DeGette quizzed Judy Norsigian on how she could oppose cloning for research, Judy gave a dramatic reply: “The embryo isn’t nothing.” Moreover, pro-choice feminists have expressed anxiety about other aspects of the movement to clone embryos for experiments, including the risk to women’s health in collecting the human eggs needed to produce human clones and the economic exploitation of poorer women that results from the offering of financial inducements to egg “donors.”
Listen to these words:
These technologies are being developed at a frenzied pace. The general public has had little real opportunity to understand and consider their full implications. There are few significant controls over their use.
These conditions leave us vulnerable to being pushed into a new era of eugenic engineering, one in which people quite literally become manufactured artifacts. The implications for individual integrity and autonomy, for family and community life, for social and economic justice and indeed for world peace are chilling. Once humans begin cloning and genetically engineering their children for desired traits we will have crossed a threshold of no return.
We could have written such words. C. S. Lewis could have written them. Any thinking, serious Christian could endorse their message and grasp their profound significance. Yet they form the key section of a letter signed by Judy Norsigian and a hundred leaders of the pro-choice, “progressive” community! Some of them want a complete cloning ban. They compromised with a demand in the letter for a complete ban on cloning for “reproductive” purposes and a five-year ban on so-called “therapeutic” cloning.
Some in the “progressive” community have opposed any research on the embryo — not because they consider the embryo to be made in the divine image or to have the right to life, but because they see the embryo as deserving some degree of special respect. They feel alarmed that embryo research will lead to the redesign of human nature itself, through changes in the “germline” (the cells that carry our genetic inheritance). And they wish to protect women from having their eggs “harvested” for research.
Do we view this glass as at least half full? The conscience of the left has preserved much of the concern for the dignity of the individual (and our stewardship of creation) that less conscientious elements on the political right have let slip. This helps to provoke us into a deep discussion of the meaning of technology and a haunting review of the sad story of eugenics. For this we must thank our feminist and environmentalist friends.
Key supporters of “abortion rights” have included mainline Christian denominations, to the great sadness of many of their members. One of the major players has been the United Methodist Church, which maintains an explicit pro-choice view. Yet here also we see a clear distinction being drawn between support for the pro-choice abortion position and opposition to experiments involving cloned embryos.
We may think them inconsistent in their view of technology and the embryo. But each of these groups — pro-choice feminists, environmentally conscious scientists, and this mainline-liberal denomination — has an interest in the wider implications of biotechnology. Pro-life Christians may find this ironic, but alongside support for abortion, political progressives have long been critical of the development of biotech. The cloning issue has had the practical effect of drawing these warring parties into a loose coalition.
A powerful symbol of these developments appeared prominently in the op-ed pages of the Chicago Tribune on August 8, 2001. Two people well-known in their communities as symbols of the pro-choice and pro-life causes, respectively — law professor and widely published biotech writer Lori B. Andrews and Nigel M. de S. Cameron — coauthored the piece. It argued that the House of Representatives cloning hearing that brought together Judy Norsigian, Stuart Newman, and conservatives like Richard Doerflinger to argue on the same side of the cloning argument represented a watershed moment in the history of our time. It indicated that, while the abortion debate continued and would continue to be pursued with passion by both sides, farsighted leaders had chosen to come together and make common cause against a new threat to human dignity on which they were united.
Both the left and right are discovering, much to their surprise, that they agree on some major issues. In a classic illustration of what Francis Schaeffer termed “co-belligerency,” they have discovered a common enemy.
There is little doubt that the biotech industry and its cheerleaders in the press and politics want the abortion debate to divide conservatives and progressives, making them unable to collaborate on anything else. The press has generally presented the debate as another round of Roe, with pro-lifers once again going into battle to defend the unborn. Press reporting of the House hearing with Norsigian, Newman, and Doerflinger is a case in point; it should have made headline news. It didn’t.
As the “biotech century” opens, and the prospect of the brave new world dawns, Christians find themselves working with strange bedfellows. But we have been here before. William Wilberforce, the nineteenth-century British statesman, devoted his life to getting slavery abolished in the British empire through exactly such a strategy. More recently, it is how Christians have worked in Washington, DC, to expose the horrors of the concentration camps of North Korea and to press for an end to slavery and genocide in the Sudan. We always welcome the opportunity to work with men and women in the cause of what is just and right, even if we also disagree very deeply with other things they believe. As we examine the challenges of the brave new world in the chapters that follow, we will see that at many points we have allies in the struggle for human dignity. We thank God for them.
More than ever, the world needs prudence. The dictionary defines prudence this way: “to exercise sound judgment in practical matters, to be cautious or discreet in conduct, to be circumspect and not rash.”
Just consider a recent incident involving Dr. Paul Agutter, a scientist jailed for seven years after trying to poison his wife. Dubbed “the Safeway Poisoner” because he tried to cover his tracks by spiking drinks with poison in a Safeway supermarket, Dr. Agutter has been released from a British prison and employed by the University of Manchester. Strangely, he’s been hired to lecture students on ethics, including teaching a one-day course called “Therapeutic Cloning: Ethics and Science.”
I would say the review committee at the University of Manchester lacked prudence on this one. Haven’t its members looked at their moral compass lately? Don’t they see something odd about their decision? When questioned, Dr. Piers Benn of Imperial College London defended the decision: “Normally, people who get into moral philosophy do so because they care about making the world a better place or putting things right. But I can’t see any logical contradiction between being able to think about ethical questions and being able to do rather criminal acts.”
What is a “rather” criminal act? Would Mrs. Agutter or the people who became sick after buying drinks at Safeway say they were “rather poisoned”?
Don’t think cases like this are occurring mainly in the United Kingdom. They crop up in the States all the time. Princeton University, for example, employs Dr. Peter Singer, an ethics professor who advocates the killing of some unwanted persons. Infants born with severe disabilities are “pre-persons,” in his judgment, and grandmothers with Alzheimer’s are “post-persons.” Dr. Singer believes that personhood is defined by an individual’s ability to make decisions, to be “self-aware” or have self-consciousness. If a person lacks those mental faculties — or if he has extreme physical abnormalities — that individual should not be classed as a person. And, of course, if a human being is not considered a person, he has no rights. Dr. Singer’s moral compass needs serious adjustment.
That adjustment, of course, can come only from the transcendent and eternal Word of God. Second Kings 18:32 insists, “Choose life and not death!” And Deuteronomy 30:19 – 20 says, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life.” Acts 17:28 tells us that “in [God] we live and move and have our being.” Without accepting strong and robust absolute truths like these, the pointer on our compass spins out of control, wildly swinging this way and that. God and his Word make up true north. The Prince of Peace is our Polaris. Without a grounding in God, anything — absolutely anything — goes.
I don’t believe most people want to live in an out-of-control culture. I’m convinced people of common sense yearn for a society lawfully ordered. Despite what happened last week . . .
I received a letter from a man I will call Conrad who took issue with my views on Dr. Agutter. Conrad believed I was being uncharitable. He thought that if the doctor had paid his debt to society, he should be given every opportunity to get integrated back into the mainstream of life. This man chided me for my un-Christian spirit and lack of forgiveness. The letter stung. I wondered about the prudent thing to do. Rather than allow a reviling spirit to shape my response, I went to prayer. I asked God to: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23 – 24).
An hour later, I typed my reply:
Dear Conrad,
I want you to know your letter arrived safely. Thanks so much for taking time to express your concerns regarding my views on Dr. Agutter’s position at the university.
On one hand, Conrad, I’m in agreement that when a convicted felon serves his sentence, he should be given every opportunity to be fully integrated back into society — it reflects the heart of Christ. I’m also grateful that, no doubt, opportunities for him in the scientific community abound, and I wish him every success in his reinstatement in the field of practical science.
But Dr. Agutter has been hired to teach ethics. And as a teacher, he will oversee young students who look not only to his qualifications, but to the practice of ethics in his life’s experience. A teacher of ethics brings character, discernment, wisdom, and insight into his field, guiding students by experience and expertise.
Yes, Dr. Agutter’s payment of penalty to society is complete. His forgiveness — should he seek it from those he harmed — ought to be assured. However, in my opinion his credibility and authority as a teacher of ethics has been forfeited. Yes, his credibility and authority in a scientific lab may be absolutely unquestioned; but not so his integrity in standards of conduct and moral judgment which make for the basis of good ethics. That will take time, much time, to reinstate.
Again, thank you for writing and I hope I’ve been able to explain why I’m so concerned about not only this issue, but many other matters which require good men of great character to lead and guide us with integrity and sound judgment. It’s what our society — it’s what our world — desperately needs.
Yours in His care,
Joni Eareckson Tada
George Will once stated that culture is like a giant slab of molasses and our decisions, like tiny channels, guide its lumbering movement. And so with much prayer and maybe more prudence, write that letter. Engage your professor. Share your views with your neighbor, at the cleaners, the community center, the market, or your neighborhood meeting place. Influence culture and paint black “black” and white “white.” Write your local newspaper . . . connect with your senator or city councillor.
In short, pull out your compass — your Bible — and point your world due north.
JONI