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At stake are millions of dollars in federal
funding and countless lives. Whose lives? That
all depends on which side you listen to. Are
scientists going to be saving millions of lives
through new miracle cures or are they going to be
sacrificing the lives of millions of unborn
babies?
Both sides of the debate claim the moral high
ground, but which side is right?
Certainly, everyone wants to see science continue
to advance its noble war on disease. The promise
of a cure for Alzheimers, Parkinson's, or heart
disease is nothing short of a miracle. And the
use of a few cells that will be discarded anyway
seems like a minor detail in so great an endeavor.
Why then has there been such an outcry against
this research from religious and moral leaders?
Is this just another narrow-minded attempt to make
science bow to religion? Perhaps, but when have
so many differing creeds been so unified on a
point. Or is it a case of abortion foes taking
the cause to extremes? Even a long-time
supporter of abortion rights, the United Methodist
Church, has condemned embryonic stem cell use,
citing "profound and disturbing moral and ethical
issues."
And in spite of the tempting benefits, there is a
general reluctance among the public. Close to
two dozen states have already enacted laws
restricting research on human embryos and nine ban
the practice outright. By a two-to-one margin,
Americans favor the use of cells taken from adult
humans over the experimentation on a human embryo.
The sense of revulsion that ordinary people feel
cannot be ignored. The American Heart
Association learned quickly just how squeamish
Americans are about such research, and reversed
its support based on projected losses in
volunteers and charitable income. Scientists
might dismiss such feelings as sentimentality.
But what if the still small voice saying, "Don't
take this path," is the voice of our conscience.
There are societies existing in the world today
that do not hear the call of conscience. They
allow their people to starve and subject them to
all manner of indignities and atrocities,
including slavery, torture, even cannibalism and
child sacrifice. We call these people barbarians
and consider ourselves incapable of ever producing
such behavior.
But what if everything that we are and have ever
been rests on this one principle: that all human
life is sacred? If we now decide that some
human life can be set aside and sacrificed for the
greater good, how will we be able to decide not to
sacrifice some more? Where on the continuum of
human life will we be able to place a marker and
say, "These lives cannot be sacrificed."
We are faced with a great temptation: to take a
small step into darkness in order to achieve what
appears to be a very great good. The danger is
that the darkness may conceal an abyss from which
there is no return. Then, having cast away our
guiding principle and everything that hung upon
it, there will be no stopping our descent into
barbarism.
Winston Churchill, the great statesman, who more
than any other in his century understood the quiet
beginnings of tyranny, urged against this sort of
compromise in a memorable address in 1941, "Never
give in, never give in, never, never, never,
never--in nothing, great or small, large or
petty--never give in except to convictions of
honor and good sense."
Kyleen Wright
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