Adriano Pessina
Moderation
and caution applied to scientific research are virtues unknown, both formally
and significantly, to the field of biomedicine that deals with the generation
of human life.
Formally - note the ease and speed with which each discovery and study is
disclosed and indirectly corroborated, studies that once had to be repeatedly
tested before being divulged to the media. Significantly - the experimental
procedure followed today acts directly on human life and does not proceed
gradually any longer from the laboratory to animals and from animals to man.
Generalized judgements would be unjust and unwarranted but we cannot ignore
the fact that those who perform the most unscrupulous studies try to corroborate
their consistency and the method followed by skilfully manoeuvring the media,
in order to create direct emotional and cultural pressure on public opinion.
The disproportion and even the contradictions between motivations produced
to justify certain experiments and the actions really performed is amazing.
Added to this is a linguistic effort intended conceal the serious nature and
complexity of ethical problems concerning research on embryos. Let us briefly
examine two different situations: the so- called therapeutic cloning and the
recent experiment on the early stages of ectogenesis (announced by Dr. Hung-Cing-Liu
of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility, Weill Medical College).
Distortion of the human
status
The introduction to would-be therapeutic cloning is based on the theory that
research conducted on stem cells taken from appropriately cloned human embryos
hold the promise of better therapeutic results than those currently achieved,
after years of studies and experiments, by using stem cells taken from adults
or from the umbilical cord.
The aim is to make this gamble creditable - embryos are cloned to make use
of their cells, genetic material that can potentially heal almost every degenerative
disease and every diseased organ. Those who support this gamble are willing
to sacrifice human embryos, whether they be cloned or not, to obtain the future
health of other men.
To avoid realization of the relevance of the stakes in question, Science,
the famous review, proposed in a recent article to do away with the term “cloning”
for humans destined to be used as genetic material, and to restrict its use
to only designate cloning procedures that will lead to the birth of a child.
The first type of cloning, which the authors of the article approve, is defined
therapeutic because it is limited (to put it lightly) to the generation of
a non sentient human being; the second type, censured and condemned, is defined
as reproductive because it is directed towards the generation of a sentient
human being.
But the definition is distorting - in fact, the purposes behind cloning do
not alter cloning itself as an act. If cloning produces a human being who
can develop and live, unless he is destroyed or suffers from pathologies that
are incompatible with his growth, it still remains a reproductive act.
The adjective “therapeutic” is equally arbitrary: cloning per se is not of
any use in any therapy and the therapeutic efficacy of embryonic stem cells
has yet to be proved. It is, on the contrary, purely experimental cloning.
This type of cloning is however morally unacceptable as, in the name of
man’s future health, the human status is doubly distorted: the purpose of
human reproduction becomes the destruction of what is generated and the human
being at an embryonic stage becomes the material of scientific research.
The objection is: “Giving up this trend means giving up research and the discovery
of new therapies”.
Actually, what is renounced, in the name of respect for our human status and
its rightful dignity, is the use of the lives of other human beings in a gamble
for future health. In fact, the stakes are extremely clear in this gamble
(the lives of an undefined number of experimentally generated humans), but
its possible success has yet to be proved. How then will we rejoice in the
prize of therapeutic discoveries when we have digested the idea that human
life is worth only the purpose certain adults will have assigned it? In ancient
history too the slave was considered a tool in the hands of free men and his
worth depended on his use - the slave’s well being was in the hand’s of his
master who also held the power of life and death over him.
We thought such traditions belonged to the past.
The practical and theoretical consequences behind “therapeutic” cloning are
extremely dire. Therapeutic cloning tends to shatter the belief that all humans
are equal because they are human and as such they must be respected beyond
differences in race, gender and age. In the name of what can we establish
that a sick person has the right to be healed at the cost of the lives of
other humans, be they even at an embryonic stage? Even the recent attempt
at triggering a sort of ectogenesis (by creating the so-called artificial
womb), develops at the height of a rooted indifference towards the moral value,
and not only the biological one, of the human act of procreation and towards
the human status of the newly generated being.
From the moment technobiology took over the generation of man, destroying
the barriers between zootechny and anthropology, the moral and symbolic meaning
of procreation has been gradually impoverished. The very corporeality, as
part of the human identity, has been confined to its purely biological functions.
What will become of man’s image and his interpersonal relationships in a mentality
that accepts the idea of human existence only in utilitarian terms, limiting
itself to the descriptive requirements of anatomy and physiology? The increasing
gap between the moral motivations biomedicine uses to defend its studies and
the concrete actions performed are amazing. While the future possibility of
saving the lives of human embryos by creating artificial wombs is extolled,
today there are no scruples whatsoever to using them as guinea pigs.
While maternity and the presumed right to have children at any cost is upheld,
woman and maternity are limited to their biological role, becoming only a
womb, a reproductive organ.
We run the risk of erasing the very human identity of man, in the name
of a vague humanitarian trend in medicine.
These contradictions place the moral foundations of this scientific gamble
and its every enterprise at stake.
(trad. Interpres sas Giussano)
Adriano Pessina
Cattedra
di Bioetica
Università
Cattolica di Milano
