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"Message in a Test Tube"

Source: Toronto Star (ON)
Date: May 15, 2004
Author: Olivia Ward
Editor: Mary Deanne Shears


Should scientists have free rein to build "designer babies" from human clones? Do stem cells harvested from human embryos herald new hope for deadly diseases, or downgrade the sanctity of life? Should the Bible, or biology, be the benchmark of children's education?

Ever since science began to penetrate the innermost secrets of human existence, believers have been uneasy that God would take a back seat to scientific progress. But in the 21st century, scientific advances and religious resurgence have been on a collision course.

This weekend, international academics are gathering in Toronto to debate the moral issues of science, as it grapples with religionists who vow that only God can set standards for human behaviour, and skeptics who worry that scientific research is spiralling out of control.

"Half a century ago, science had enormous prestige," says McGill University philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge. "Now, that is declining. Scientists have not explained themselves very well to the public. This is a golden opportunity to restore the balance."

Bunge, with American humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz, was to deliver the keynote address of the weekend conference, ``Science and Ethics: How Scientific Inquiry Helps Frame Value Judgments.''

Kurtz heads the Center for Inquiry International, which organized the conference. And, he says, "the interface between science and ethics has moved to the centre of controversy in many parts of the world, including Canada. Great breakthroughs are being made now, and the frontiers of science are expanding. But the movement toward censorship is also growing."

In the United States, a backlash against the secular sciences has been building for more than a decade, since Patrick Buchanan, a prophet of the Republican religious right, first sounded the alarm: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of a nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself."

Under President George W. Bush, Christian religious radicalism has made large strides, even in academia. Evangelical groups have taken root from small provincial colleges to the liberal Ivy League. At the same time, creationists, who oppose the theory of evolution, have transported their beliefs to some state-based school curricula. In Florida, creationists have set up a biblical theme park to oppose Disney World's evolution-based historical displays.

U.S. surveys show that up to 75 per cent of Americans favour the return of Christian prayers to public schools, and most support the Pledge of Allegiance, declaring America "one nation under God."

The Bush administration's opposition to abortion, sex education, and types of scientific research has had far-reaching consequences for funding of social, scientific and medical programs. Bush's chief adviser on bioethics, Leon Kass, has argued that any attempt to "manufacture life" is evil.

The U.S. Congress, too, recently passed laws banning both cloning and stem cell research. Scientists fear the back-to-religion trend could intensify as the 2004 presidential election approaches.

"Secularism has become a dirty word," says Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. "Democrats are being warned that they do not have a chance of winning the presidential election unless they adopt a posture of religious `me-too-ism' to convince voters their politics are grounded in values just as sacred as those proclaimed by President Bush."

In Canada, religion is a less pervasive issue. According to a recent survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, only 30 per cent of Canadians consider it "important" to their lives, about half the number who declared themselves devotees in the U.S.

Though in an increasingly diverse society Christian conservatism has made little impact, a bill to ban human cloning was passed two months ago over the objections of many Canadian scientists.

In Britain, which has a long tradition of religious skepticism, religion is making a modest comeback. Secular schools are responding to parental demands for more "Christian values" by converting to Church of England curricula, which teach basic subjects, but emphasize ethics and discipline.

Australia too has seen an upswing in private schools, many of them religiously-based and teaching Anglican, Catholic or Islamic doctrines. In the past five years the federal government has spent more money on private schools than on university education.

The outcome of the religious revivals, scientists fear, may be further doubts about the validity of science, and more attempts to control or limit research on religious grounds.

"The coming decades promise to be both the best and the worst of times for the evolutionary disciplines," says University of Georgia geneticist John Avise, in the journal BioScience.

While huge advances have been made in mapping the human genome, understanding patterns of genetic inheritance, developing gene therapy for serious diseases and launching research into eliminating future genetic diseases, they are also setting the scene for a potential clash with those who would curtail such studies on moral grounds.

"Fundamental research of this type may well lead the field of evolutionary genetics further into realms that some philosophers and theologians might prefer science left unexplored," warns Avise.

However, says Kurtz, it's time that scientists and philosophers applied themselves to solving ethical problems, rather than abandoning the field to those who would make judgments on religious grounds.

"Does morality depend on religion, as is commonly held?" he asks. "Theists insist that without religious foundations, anything goes, and social chaos will ensue. But secular societies have already developed responsible ethical norms, and science and reason have helped us to solve moral dilemmas. How that can be done may well be the hottest issue of the 21st century."

In the U.S., which is the largest source of scientific research funds, Kurtz says, the belief that "God alone provides us with absolute commandments is virtually official doctrine."

But he points out, acting on purely religious grounds also carries dangers, including the violence perpetrated in past religious wars, and the terrorism associated with modern-day extremists who have killed innocent people in the name of Islam.

On the other hand, those who take the "postmodern" view that there are no real standards, but only tastes and opinions, are also mistaken, Kurtz adds.

"If we accept cultural relativity as our guide, we would have no grounds to object to laws that condone the stoning to death of adulteresses," he says.

In the search for a new system of ethics, scientists could look to values that are related to human interests, needs and desires, but are also open to scientific evaluation, he suggests. That is already common practice in the fields of medicine, social psychology, economics, political science and many other disciplines.

In many countries, however, highly knowledgeable scientists have been criticized for arrogance in promoting the development of new products that could potentially damage humans and the environment.

And, says Argentine-born Bunge, both philosophers and scientists have often been slow to take in the big picture of massive threats to the earth and its future, convincing some people that they are incapable of ethical judgments.

"The biggest problems we should be confronting are overpopulation and the inability of most of mankind to lead dignified lives. Philosophers, especially, live sheltered lives. Most have never been to the Third World and they've never really seen misery and hopelessness. That's not the way to approach real ethical problems."

To overcome those objections, Kurtz says, scientists must take into consideration human realities, but be ready to challenge values that are based on faith, custom or tradition: a system he calls "naturalistic ethics."

In the case of cloning, he says, it's necessary to examine the two main objections — that it is unsafe at this stage of technology, because infants could be born with serious health problems; and that it is immoral to "design" children.

"If it were to become safe, proponents argue, it could have enormous benefits, like curing Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, or juvenile diabetes. Opponents on moral grounds claim it is tampering with humans who are possessed of souls from the moment of conception."

The debate on the human soul, Kurtz admits, is a difficult if not insoluble one. However, he says, in addition to questioning whether "small collections of cells are sentient beings," scientists could argue that human beings are already being modified at head-spinning rates that are quite different from "nature's plan" dating back to biblical times.

"We wear false teeth, eyeglasses, and hearing aids. We sport hair grafts, pacemakers, organ transplants, artificial limbs. We undergo transgender operations and injections. We use Viagra to enhance sexual potency, take mega-vitamins and hormone therapy. Why not go further?"

But, he says, a dogmatic approach to scientific ethics, whether religiously or academically based, will not be productive or lead to progress.

"The best corrective is some skepticism and a willingness to engage in ethical inquiry, not only about others' moral zeal, but about our own, especially if we are tempted to translate the results of our own ethical or scientific inquiries into commandments.

For in recognizing our own fallibility we can learn to tolerate other human beings, and appreciate their diversity and plurality of lifestyles."

However, for some rationalists and believers, the line is already drawn in the scientific sand. They believe that the debate will become more bitter in the future, as those with entrenched views face off across new areas of science.

The Nobel laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, recently announced in the journal Nature Neuroscience that he has discovered the cells in the human brain that are responsible for creating an individual's unique sense of self.

"For the first time we have a coherent scheme for the neural correlates of consciousness in philosophical, psychological and neural terms," he said, a claim that directly challenges religious believers who contend that perception and personality are properties of the human soul. Without belief in a divine hand, they argue, mankind will become truly dehumanized.

"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will," Crick wrote in an earlier essay on the thought process, "are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

This article was retrieved from The Toronto Star

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