Peter Singer: Use Brain Damaged Humans Instead of Chimpanzees in HIV Research
There he goes again: I missed this at the time, but last May, Princeton University's Peter Singer urged in an on-line periodical that brain damaged human beings be used in HIV research rather than chimpanzees. From the story "An Ethical Man:" "'HIV research using chimps has not been very helpful as they don't seem to get the disease in the same way humans do,' Singer explains. 'So I don't think it's right and it's causing a lot of suffering and distress to beings who are sensitive animals--social animals who should be living in social groups and who suffer being in isolation and confined and that's wrong. If we need beings very like us to do this on, we should perhaps [turn to] the families of people who tragically have been brain-damaged and have no hope of recovery from persistent vegetative state who are totally beyond suffering because they are beyond consciousness."
Well, I guess we should just dump the Nuremberg Code in the shredder and tear up the rules regarding ethical human subjects of medical research. Singer rejects human exceptionalism and embraces personhood theory, and so the cognitively devasated are reduced to so many guinea pigs. And while we're at it, why not include unwanted infants in medical experimentation since they, like they too are not considered persons in Singer's view. This is precisely where rejecting the belief in human exceptionalism and universal human equal moral worth leads us.
An "ethical man" my left nostril.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:13 PM
18 Comments
18 Comments:
I agree that if using chimps was useless, it would be useless to use chimps. Indeed, if that were so, scientists wouldn't be wasting their time. However, most scientists think that the HIV retro virus crossed the species barrier from chimps to man. Also, the fact that they don't get sick from it and we do IS important. If we could figure out why, it might make for a cure or a vaccine.
I think Singer likes to shock. But he is so adamant in tearing down "speciesist" culture that I think he means what he says. Unfortunately, he is not on the fringe any longer.
Question:
If all humans are animals, and if all animals are equal, and if it is a bad thing to harm any animal, then isn't it a bad thing to harm any human, even one who is in a persistant vegetative state? I mean, Singer is Mister "One-is-one-and-none-is-greater-than-one" himself. So doesn't that mean that he should encourage an end to all medical testing of any sort, since some type of animal would have to be harmed by experimenting?
Wesley J Smith, highly valued teacher, what do you base your belief in human exceptionalism on in contrast to Singer's specieism?
He seems clearly to be basing his reasons on a materialist epistemology and debunks belief in Judeo Christian value for life as being made in the image of God as being a belief that is not based on evidence. It seems that by your use of the term human exceptionalism and by your references to your atheist friend that supports human rights you believe in philosophical bases for human exceptionalism. What are they?
T.E. Fine. Singer's theory of animal liberation is somewhat different from PETA's. PETA-types believes that moral value comes from the ability to feel pain, sometimes called painience.
Singer believes moral value comes from being a "person" based on being self aware over time. To Singer, somene in PVS has lost personhood and thus, is merely a thing that can be used instrumentally. On the other hand, a chimp is a person, and so should be accorded something akin to human rights. He sees this for other animals, too.
So, he supports infanticide, not because a baby is disabled but a non person. Of course, this would open the door to using babies that are to be killed in experiments or as organ donors.
Raskoinikov: In a nutshell: Two things. Humans were either created or evolved to become the most extraordinary known beings in the universe with our capacities. our understanding, our transcendence of instinct and natural drives, our art, our ability to literally create and project beyond the natura., etc. As a consequence of somehow becoming "conscious," We have become moral beings. We have transcended Darwinian limitations, etc. I believe this gives us rights as well as responsibilities.
Second, I accept that the fundamental principle of society should be universal human equality. Jefferson said it brilliantly when he wrote about self evident truths and all men being created equal.
The only way to achieve that is to have an objective rather than subjective view about what makes life protectable, which is a biological determination.
The two work hand in glove together.
I'll agree with the second rationale, but would qualify the first. As the elements of the first are present in various degrees in other species, I cannot fully agree that the animals are deserving of no rights and no dignity, should we accept the human exceptionalism theory in all its form.
Furthemore, Wesley's philosophy is concurrently goes with life-at-conception. I believe that the life-at-conception is itself a personhood theory in denial, as it excludes sperm and ova. If we have the right to say "46 chromosomes" makes a "complete human entity" and anything before that is a "bunch of cells", then we have the right to say either potentiality, brain-waves, the quickening, birth, or any other rationale you can come up with makes a complete human being, and anything before that is a bunch of cells.
I think it is better to say that ALL life deserves dignity should be the starting point.
Wesley - Ah, thank you for the clarification. I wasn't really aware of the difference.
Royale - Human life does begin at conception: the moment an egg is fertilized by a sperm, the zygot that is produced already has human DNA and begins to divide in accordance with the pre-programmed information stored in said DNA. However the information got there, one cannot deny that DNA is a processing code for the building and care of the human computer. Whether or not one believes in a soul doesn't matter in this case, since the minatue human being created fits the technical definition of a lifeform: it grows, feeds, eliminates, and reproudces. It functions like any other living creature, simply depending on its mother for nourishment for a time, but otherwise is genetically the same as any other person.
A sperm cell does not grow, feed, eliminate, or reproduce. It does not have the full DNA complete with the genetic processing code that makes it an individual human. Likewise, an ovum does not grow, feed, eliminate, or reproduce. In both cases these are simple cells which are produced by the human body unable to divide into new cells and unable to function in any environment. They do not divide into new cells (unless they come into contact with each other), they do not take in nourishment, they do not eliminate waste products, they simply follow a very organized code of information that is much, much lower level information than is produced in complete human DNA. They are no different from the individual cells within the human body.
An entire human being is a highly complex computer; sperm and ovum are very small components of the overall computer system and are not directly linked to the main programming, not until they have combined. It is perfectly logical to say they are a bunch of cells belonging to the parent. It's only after the combination that the cells become a completely separate computer with its own unique programming.
Wesley said: "As a consequence of somehow becoming "conscious," We have become moral beings."
But isn't this very close to personhood theory? You are attributing moral status to humans as a species (by virtue of consciousness); personhood theory does the same thing but on an individual basis.
If consciousness is the distinguishing character of moral beings then your view seems to be in trouble, since embryos and the brain-dead are not conscious.
No. Personhood theory claims that humans should be judged by our capacities, which means that some of us are out of the club. Personhood theory denies human exceptionalism and holds that each individual organism, whether a redwood tree, a bacteria, a mouse, or a human should be judged by the same standards.
Human execptionalism holds that as a SPECIES we are completely different than any other known organism in the universe. That we have leapt beyond nature, if you will. For reasons that cannot be demonstrated, we accomplished something that has never been done in the hundreds of millions of years that there has been life on this planet--we became conscious, moral beings.
This is a secular basis for human exceptionalism. And its corollary, universal human equality.
It is interesting: Those who decry human exceptionalism claim that it can only be religiously based. So, you bring a non religious argumet into the public square, and they say it is really like personhood theory because it is based on attributes. But this overlooks the fact that one approach is designed to denigrate the importance of human life and the other demonstrates why it is exceptional. Thanks for asking.
I still fail to see a great moral difference between an ovum and sperm and a fertilized egg, great enough to exalt the latter as a "new human entity" and the former to "bunch of cells."
Many of the various praies you collectively have for the fertilized egg could also be raised for ova and sperm. Many of their limitations are also present in the zygote. The limitations of the zygote are further exacerbated if say, it were frozen in a petri dish (i.e., growth, division)
So, if you use the biological differences between the zygote and ova/sperm to justify the moral difference, but then petri dishes nullify those very same biological differences....hhmmm
In truth, it's a continuum of development.
Royale: Read an embryology text book. An ovum and a sperm are just cells. They are a bit of the organism, if you will, they are not the organism. They are no more morally meaningful then the cells that died this mornign when I brushed my teeth--and yes, it is true, I brushed my teeth this morning.
An embryo is a separate and distinct organism. It is an individual human life that begins as a one celled, integrated entity and proceeds to develop from there. But that one cell has everything in it already, biologically speaking, that it will ever have. After that, it is all a matter of development, and when you get to be my age, de-development.
The problem with talking about life beginning with conception is that the antiabortion rhetoric ignores the fact that the fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus lives inside another human being, and if we force a woman to carry a baby to term, that is violating her civil rights.
The antiabortion crowd knows this, but they skirt around this simple truth.
Abortion of a potential life (NOT a baby, by the way) is not the same as killing the disabled, the elderly, the useless, and infants. Sorry.
Susan: This post isn't about abortion. It is about Singer wanting to use people with severe cognitive impairments instead of chimps in HIV research.
The issue of personhood came up, but again, we are not talking about abortion. But rather, the propriety of using such helpless people in medical research as if they were objects.
Thanks.
I understand perfectly well the difference between your position and personhood theory. But they seem more alike than different. In each case, you define a class of beings that deserve treatment as moral agents. They just differ in HOW they do that.
I fail to see how one method is virtuous while the other is denigrating. That's pure posturing designed to shore up a weak intellectual position, as far as I can tell.
You say your position is based on the Enlightenment notion of individual rights rather than religion. Maybe that's so. But I rather doubt that Locke would be granting human rights to 16-cell blastocytes.
Wesley,
I agree with mtraven in that your analysis seems more alike to the personhood theory than different. You are placing moral worth in at conception. Others place moral worth elsewhere. You differ solely in what you consider important.
Futhermore, I have a MS in biology, studied vertebrate embryology quite extensively. Spare me the details of conception and blastocyst development, as I'm more than aware what they are.
But if you want to talk biology, complete individuality is not achieved until birth. All else in between is just that - in between.
But alas, I am asking about how we derive moral worth to the embryo. It is a moral and ethical question, not biological.
Let's analogize to decide how moral worth is measured:
1. we do not give the same value to a blank canvas and paint in a tube as we would an artistic masterpiece. So, why should we give full human rights to a potential human? It's not obvious to me.
2. I hope this analogy does not step on sensitivities, but an implanted embryo to a woman's womb is strikingly similar in relationship to a parasite and host. The host and parasite are separate, but one.
3. Finally, individuality-based rights in the post-birth environment is a continuum (sex at 16, vote at 18, drink at 21, etc...), so why is a continuum based rights approach pre-birth somehow bad.
Now, add that would you have already said, that human worth is based on consciousness and whoa - maybe potentiality/level of consciousness is a better line, and not all the elements of conception.
In a slightly different tangent, my purpose in all this is because I want something logical and coherent and NOT to denigrate life. But it strikes me as odd that you chastise personhood theorists as wanting to denigrate life. If that were the case, then you open yourself up to criticism that you embrace your theory in order to denigrate the lives of sperm, ovum, and chimpanzees.
Royale,
Define a potential human being. There is no such being.
It's similar to the fallacy of potential human life as if life is sonatneously generated from non-life.
Ova and sperm are not potential human beings. Human embryoes are human beings, complete but not fully developed human organisms/beings in the earlist stages of existence. You seem to confuse the part for the whole.
"But if you want to talk biology, complete individuality is not achieved until birth. All else in between is just that - in between."
That is simply not true. Being the expert in biology that you are, you should know that. When a woman releases an ovum and has sex, there are millions of sperm that have a chance at fertilizing that ovum. Thus there are millions of potential human beings: male, female, short, tall, fat, thin, you name it. Once the ovum has been fertilized by one particular sperm, the probability of all of the other millions of potential humans being realized goes to zero, and one particular human is defined. If it's to be a little girl with Dad's red hair and Grandma's short stature, that's established right then and there. At that point the mother does not know she is pregnant, although she may guess or hope. But all she has to do is sustain life for herself, and ~40 weeks later that particular human being is ready to separate from her and live independently. To paraphrase that appalling doctor in the UK, but making the opposite point - what's magical about the birth process?
Laura(southernxyl) A classic example of how "our side" makes scientifically accurate arguments. Thanks for the contribution.
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