Matters of Life and Death
I confess to being of an age where I am more frequently reminded of death as the lives of men and women I know, end. A generation of elders inexorably must leave ahead of us. For those who have lived long and fruitful lives it is natural and appropriate to celebrate their lives, and to share in joyful remembrance with all those still alive who have each been touched in some way by the life of the deceased.
The celebration is much more difficult when the life lost was too short. Friends, business colleagues past and present, and most tragically the young too often have their lives cut short. The crushing loss of the hopes and promise of a life not fully lived is difficult for all to bear, and the pain increases with the familial proximity to the deceased.
This is life as we all must experience it, seemingly arbitrary and unfair, yet we all know death is the final scene in the play of life.
I attended the remembrance service for a former law partner last week, one of those sad celebrations of a life too short. This brought me to the place where I was thinking about matters of life and death. Not surprisingly, my eye caught the title of an essay as I was thumbing through some back issues of First Things, looking for some inspirational and challenging reading.
Life: Defining the Beginning by the End is written by Dr. Maureen Condic, an assistant Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah. She is conducting research on the regeneration of embryonic and adult neurons following spinal cord surgery.
I urge you all to read it. Here is the URL, sorry I haven't yet figured out how to make this a link you can just click onto. Cut and paste it into your Explorer window and you should access it. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0305/articles/condic.html
Let me try to summarize it fairly for those who want a preview. She begins by asking what defines the beginning of life, a question that has been the matter of considerable legal and social debate over the years. She writes from an American perspective, but her arguments are perhaps even more cogent for us in Canada where we have no law whatsoever governing the definition of the beginning of life, and as a consequence we have abortions being performed daily throughout Canada, the decision for which ultimately rests solely with the expectant mother. The subjectivity of such a decision is one that troubles many.
Dr. Condic establishes the polarities of answers to the question. On the one extreme arethose who argue that life begins at conception, and on the other those who argue that babies are not considered fully human until a month before birth. (This latter position I initially discounted as likely emanating from some weird cultic character, or someone who believes in flying saucers, but rather it is the position of a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Peter Singer. Hard to imagine paying $45,000 US to send your kid to Princeton to learn this stuff!) I digress.
She surveys the legal and medical issues, which have produced relative certainty in our Western society with regard to the moment when life ends. The principles upon which the conclusion was arrived at were medical and scientific, and through their application there appears to have been reached a conclusion that is also satisfactory to the majority of religious denominations and ethicists.
Her conclusion is that the medical and legal definition of death draws a clear distinction between living cells and living organisms. “Organisms are living beings composed of parts that have separate but mutually dependent functions. While organisms are made of living cells, living cells themselves do not necessarily constitute an organism. The critical difference between a collection of cells and a living organism is the ability of an organism to act in a coordinated manner for the continued health and maintenance of the body as a whole. It is precisely this ability that breaks down at the moment of death, however death may occur. Dead bodies may have plenty of lives cells, but their cells no longer function together in a coordinated manner. We can take living organs and cells from dead people for transplant to patients without a breach of ethics precisely because corpses are no longer living beings. Human life is defined by the ability to function as an integrated whole--- not by the mere presence of living human cells.”
This all makes sense to me, and her argument is built purely on a scientific and medical foundation, sparing us all from the distractions of the spiritual and metaphysical, which too often clouds one's reasoning.
Dr. Condic now turns to the question of when does life begin, and posits an intellectually persuasive argument that the nature of death as the demarcation of life’s end, should provide us with the answer to the nature of life’s beginning.
She illustrates that “embryos are not mere collections of human cells, but living creatures with all the properties that define an organism as distinct from a group of cells; embryos are capable of growing, maturing, maintaining a physiologic balance between various organ systems, adapting to changing circumstances, and repairing injury… Embryos are in full possession of the very characteristic that distinguishes a living human being from a dead one; the ability of all cells in the body to function together as an organism, with all the parts acting in an integrated manner for the continued life and health of the body as a whole.”
Turning directly to the question of when does life begin she says that “despite the apparent diversity of views regarding when human life begins, the common arguments thus reduce to three general classes (form, ability and preference), all of which are highly subjective and impossible to reconcile with our current legal and moral view of postnatal human worth.
The form argument is the most intuitive. Simply put to be human something must look human. This argument asserts that human life is worthy of respect based on appearance. This she concludes is disturbing and is a trivial and capricious basis for assigning human worth and can only be applied with considerable injustice.
The ability argument is based on the ability to function as a human being. She canvasses the distinctive functions humans have – self-awareness, reason, language, all gradually acquired. This argument she concludes says human worth is gradually acquired. (This must be the intellectual hat rack the Princeton professor uses for his argument). The viability test is a subset of the ability argument. This argument she suggests is less superficial than the form argument, but is no less problematic. The functional arguments have repeatedly been rejected in determining death, partly due to their arbitrariness. “Human rights are not meted out according to performance” seems to say it best.
The preference argument is based on the extent to which the parents desire a child. Less elegantly put it is the woman’s right-to-choose mantra, which now rolls easily off the tongues of pro-choice advocates including our own Prime Minister. Stripped of its sloganism this says to the embryo – “you are a human being because I choose to view you that way”. If nothing else this is fundamentally arbitrary.
“All three of these arguments - form, ability and preference - are highly subjective and impossible to reconcile with current legal and moral views of postnatal human worth,” concludes Dr. Condic. The subjectivity and inconsistency of each makes them unsatisfactory as a basis of legislation on human life.
Dr. Condic now turns to the living organism concept from which science and law have been able to agree on the terminus of life, to provide the answer to the origin. “Unlike other definitions, understanding human life to be an intrinsic property of human organisms does not require subjective judgments regarding quality of life or relative worth.”
I found her conclusion persuasive – that a definition based on the organismal nature of human beings acknowledges that individuals with differing appearance, ability and dersirabilty are, nonetheless, equally human. “It is precisely the objective nature of such a definition (compared to the vague quality of life assessments) that has made organismal functions so compelling a basis for the legal definition of death.
“Arguments that deny human status to embryos based on form, ability or choice can be readily turned against adult humans who have imperfect form, limited ability, or who simply constitute an inconvenience to more powerful individuals or groups. She quotes Abraham Lincoln who made this very point regarding arguments put forth in his day to justify slavery:
"It is color then; the lighter having the right to enslave the darker: Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly: You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have a right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."
As Dr. Condic remarks, “postnatal humans run very little risk that embryos will someday organize politically to impose restrictions on the rights of the born.” Hence, we need not fear an uprising as did the slave owners.
Nonetheless, if Canada truly is a nation that prides itself on our protection of “fundamental human rights”, then surely we have an obligation to spend some intellectual energy to consider the meaning of the “human life” whose rights we are eager to protect.
The brilliance of Condic’s argument is that it is based on science and not morality. I say this not because I deny the value of morality, but because I know from experience how quick critics are to make the argument that those who oppose an unfettered “right” to abortion do so only from a moralistic and self-righteous perspective. These critics fail to recognize that an argument can be sound on both scientific and moral grounds.
The deaths of 40 million fetuses in America since Roe vs. Wade (and presumably a number in Canada proportionate to our smaller population) surely should give every Canadian pause for reflection on both the scientific and moral health of the society into which those human beings were prevented from being born.
If we reflect upon Dr. Condic’s reasoning with intellectual vigour, and if we conclude she is right, then we should act even in the face of the pressure that will be put on us to remain silent. It is a terrible and shameful silence that is wrought from fear or intellectual laziness.
The celebration is much more difficult when the life lost was too short. Friends, business colleagues past and present, and most tragically the young too often have their lives cut short. The crushing loss of the hopes and promise of a life not fully lived is difficult for all to bear, and the pain increases with the familial proximity to the deceased.
This is life as we all must experience it, seemingly arbitrary and unfair, yet we all know death is the final scene in the play of life.
I attended the remembrance service for a former law partner last week, one of those sad celebrations of a life too short. This brought me to the place where I was thinking about matters of life and death. Not surprisingly, my eye caught the title of an essay as I was thumbing through some back issues of First Things, looking for some inspirational and challenging reading.
Life: Defining the Beginning by the End is written by Dr. Maureen Condic, an assistant Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah. She is conducting research on the regeneration of embryonic and adult neurons following spinal cord surgery.
I urge you all to read it. Here is the URL, sorry I haven't yet figured out how to make this a link you can just click onto. Cut and paste it into your Explorer window and you should access it. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0305/articles/condic.html
Let me try to summarize it fairly for those who want a preview. She begins by asking what defines the beginning of life, a question that has been the matter of considerable legal and social debate over the years. She writes from an American perspective, but her arguments are perhaps even more cogent for us in Canada where we have no law whatsoever governing the definition of the beginning of life, and as a consequence we have abortions being performed daily throughout Canada, the decision for which ultimately rests solely with the expectant mother. The subjectivity of such a decision is one that troubles many.
Dr. Condic establishes the polarities of answers to the question. On the one extreme arethose who argue that life begins at conception, and on the other those who argue that babies are not considered fully human until a month before birth. (This latter position I initially discounted as likely emanating from some weird cultic character, or someone who believes in flying saucers, but rather it is the position of a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Peter Singer. Hard to imagine paying $45,000 US to send your kid to Princeton to learn this stuff!) I digress.
She surveys the legal and medical issues, which have produced relative certainty in our Western society with regard to the moment when life ends. The principles upon which the conclusion was arrived at were medical and scientific, and through their application there appears to have been reached a conclusion that is also satisfactory to the majority of religious denominations and ethicists.
Her conclusion is that the medical and legal definition of death draws a clear distinction between living cells and living organisms. “Organisms are living beings composed of parts that have separate but mutually dependent functions. While organisms are made of living cells, living cells themselves do not necessarily constitute an organism. The critical difference between a collection of cells and a living organism is the ability of an organism to act in a coordinated manner for the continued health and maintenance of the body as a whole. It is precisely this ability that breaks down at the moment of death, however death may occur. Dead bodies may have plenty of lives cells, but their cells no longer function together in a coordinated manner. We can take living organs and cells from dead people for transplant to patients without a breach of ethics precisely because corpses are no longer living beings. Human life is defined by the ability to function as an integrated whole--- not by the mere presence of living human cells.”
This all makes sense to me, and her argument is built purely on a scientific and medical foundation, sparing us all from the distractions of the spiritual and metaphysical, which too often clouds one's reasoning.
Dr. Condic now turns to the question of when does life begin, and posits an intellectually persuasive argument that the nature of death as the demarcation of life’s end, should provide us with the answer to the nature of life’s beginning.
She illustrates that “embryos are not mere collections of human cells, but living creatures with all the properties that define an organism as distinct from a group of cells; embryos are capable of growing, maturing, maintaining a physiologic balance between various organ systems, adapting to changing circumstances, and repairing injury… Embryos are in full possession of the very characteristic that distinguishes a living human being from a dead one; the ability of all cells in the body to function together as an organism, with all the parts acting in an integrated manner for the continued life and health of the body as a whole.”
Turning directly to the question of when does life begin she says that “despite the apparent diversity of views regarding when human life begins, the common arguments thus reduce to three general classes (form, ability and preference), all of which are highly subjective and impossible to reconcile with our current legal and moral view of postnatal human worth.
The form argument is the most intuitive. Simply put to be human something must look human. This argument asserts that human life is worthy of respect based on appearance. This she concludes is disturbing and is a trivial and capricious basis for assigning human worth and can only be applied with considerable injustice.
The ability argument is based on the ability to function as a human being. She canvasses the distinctive functions humans have – self-awareness, reason, language, all gradually acquired. This argument she concludes says human worth is gradually acquired. (This must be the intellectual hat rack the Princeton professor uses for his argument). The viability test is a subset of the ability argument. This argument she suggests is less superficial than the form argument, but is no less problematic. The functional arguments have repeatedly been rejected in determining death, partly due to their arbitrariness. “Human rights are not meted out according to performance” seems to say it best.
The preference argument is based on the extent to which the parents desire a child. Less elegantly put it is the woman’s right-to-choose mantra, which now rolls easily off the tongues of pro-choice advocates including our own Prime Minister. Stripped of its sloganism this says to the embryo – “you are a human being because I choose to view you that way”. If nothing else this is fundamentally arbitrary.
“All three of these arguments - form, ability and preference - are highly subjective and impossible to reconcile with current legal and moral views of postnatal human worth,” concludes Dr. Condic. The subjectivity and inconsistency of each makes them unsatisfactory as a basis of legislation on human life.
Dr. Condic now turns to the living organism concept from which science and law have been able to agree on the terminus of life, to provide the answer to the origin. “Unlike other definitions, understanding human life to be an intrinsic property of human organisms does not require subjective judgments regarding quality of life or relative worth.”
I found her conclusion persuasive – that a definition based on the organismal nature of human beings acknowledges that individuals with differing appearance, ability and dersirabilty are, nonetheless, equally human. “It is precisely the objective nature of such a definition (compared to the vague quality of life assessments) that has made organismal functions so compelling a basis for the legal definition of death.
“Arguments that deny human status to embryos based on form, ability or choice can be readily turned against adult humans who have imperfect form, limited ability, or who simply constitute an inconvenience to more powerful individuals or groups. She quotes Abraham Lincoln who made this very point regarding arguments put forth in his day to justify slavery:
"It is color then; the lighter having the right to enslave the darker: Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly: You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have a right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."
As Dr. Condic remarks, “postnatal humans run very little risk that embryos will someday organize politically to impose restrictions on the rights of the born.” Hence, we need not fear an uprising as did the slave owners.
Nonetheless, if Canada truly is a nation that prides itself on our protection of “fundamental human rights”, then surely we have an obligation to spend some intellectual energy to consider the meaning of the “human life” whose rights we are eager to protect.
The brilliance of Condic’s argument is that it is based on science and not morality. I say this not because I deny the value of morality, but because I know from experience how quick critics are to make the argument that those who oppose an unfettered “right” to abortion do so only from a moralistic and self-righteous perspective. These critics fail to recognize that an argument can be sound on both scientific and moral grounds.
The deaths of 40 million fetuses in America since Roe vs. Wade (and presumably a number in Canada proportionate to our smaller population) surely should give every Canadian pause for reflection on both the scientific and moral health of the society into which those human beings were prevented from being born.
If we reflect upon Dr. Condic’s reasoning with intellectual vigour, and if we conclude she is right, then we should act even in the face of the pressure that will be put on us to remain silent. It is a terrible and shameful silence that is wrought from fear or intellectual laziness.
posted by Ben Buan | 8:54 a.m.
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