I hope he didn't mean that...

[rhu]

On my way to work yesterday, I heard on the radio a scientist crowing about Obama's revocation of Bush's executive order regarding stem cell research. The gist of it was "I'm so glad that now scientists can do what we need to without worrying about religious or moral objections, because President Obama is restoring science to its rightful primacy." I forget the exact wording (it was about 8:30 on Morning Edition, if I have time I'll try to get a transcription later) but in the quote he definitely included both religious and moral objections as separate obstructions to getting good science done.

Now as it happens, I believe that President Obama's decision was the right one. My religious and moral beliefs (and no, they're not always the same) are that until the majority of the body passes out of the mother, a fetus has the status of potential human life, and is not an equal person with someone who has already been born. Thus, if an 80-pound 9-year-old girl's life is threatened by the twins she's carrying, not only do I believe she has a right to an abortion, I believe she has a as much of a moral obligation to get one as she would have an obligation to get treatment if she had full-bore influenza.

But I disagree with my nameless radio-interviewed scientist. Science has ethics boards and guidelines for a reason. At the far extreme of the scale (and yes, I'm about to bring in the Nazis to a discussion on abortion, sorry, but at least it's not in the usual way) is the quandry of what do we do with the valuable medical results that Dr. Mengele and his colleagues got.

So by all means, let us celebrate the lives that will probably be saved as a result of President Obama's new executive order. Let us look forward to the time when valid scientific results are not ignored or falsified because of ideology. But do not let's allow our rhetoric to suggest that the pendulum ought to swing to the other extreme, where the reach of science is unchecked by any moral considerations.

Comments

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

I heard the same scientist and had the same exact response. If CERN thought there were a legitimate chance of destroying the world, they wouldn't activate the LHC. There is no standard by which scientific inquiry is unchecked by morality.

President Obama's rhetoric, now, called for the responsible procession of scientific inquiry.

[sethg]

On the one hand, as a good positivist, I agree with the principle that science (determining what the world is) and morals (determining how people should act) are fields of inquiry that work by separate rules and that it makes no sense to say that one moral judgement is more "scientific" than another.

On the other hand, the previous regime's stem-cell research ban was backed up by bad morality and bad science. Bush claimed that since his ban would not extend to already-existing stem-cell lines, scientists who wanted to do stem-cell research could get whatever they needed from those existing lines. According to scientists who actually worked in the field, this claim was false.

[cazique.livejournal.com]

Well put.

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

IIRC Jewish scripture supports your view of the fetus not getting the same consideration as a born baby... I remember reading where you pay for a life with a life, but if a man causes another man's wife to miscarry, then he has to pay the husband a sum of money. No?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, sort of. You're thinking of the passage we just read a few weeks ago, in Ex. 21:

22 And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

The Oral Law, however, explains this to mean that for each of the specific injuries enumerated in vv. 23-25 there is a specific fixed penalty, while for causing a miscarriage the penalty is at the discretion of the judges. Part of why this explanation makes sense is the context; a few verses above we read:

12. He that smiteth a man, so that he dieth, shall surely be put to death.

The Oral Law hates redundancy in the text. So if the penalty for willful murder is capital punishment (and in the Hebrew that verse is poetically succinct and forceful --- I'd translate it as "The smasher of a man who dies, dies a death") then what does "life for life" come to add?

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

I understood when back when I read it (I read a modern Christian translation called the Good News Bible, when I believed, between 1975 and 1985) that life for life referred to the woman and not the baby. I still have that book, and now that you have given me the verse... oh look here is what they say and they are pretty explicit about it. Not that you should care, but at least it shows where I got the idea.

12-13: Whoever hits a man and kills him is to be put to death. But if it was an accident and he did not mean to kill he man, he can escape to a place which I will choose...

22-24: If some men are fighting and hurt a pregnant woman so that she loses her child, but she is not injured in any other way, the one who hurt her is to be fined whatever amount the woman's husband demands, subject to the approval of the judges. But if the woman herself is injured, the punishment shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth...

I guess the Christian interpretation of the Jewish scripture, then, is that causing the accidental death of a guy you intended to hit but not kill is not as bad as causing the accidental death of a pregnant woman who was too close while you were hitting the guy.

Anyway, thanks for entertaining this. On your original topic, I guess I just find it interesting that there's not a unifying religious view of what life is, what a fetus is, etc; whoever yells the loudest, that's what everyone thinks Religion wants.