Posted by
brad on Wednesday, August 02, 2006 10:13:49 AM
Of all of the many ethically questionable terms used in the bioethics debates (blob of tissue, pre-embryo, persistent vegitative state, therapeutic cloning, etc.) the most dangerous by far is that of “human non-persons. This is a term now being used to classify certain types of human beings, specifically human embryos, as non-persons.
Having grudgingly accepted the long established (1829) scientific fact that the fertilized human egg and its subsequent embryonic form is a human being the opposing forces promoting embryonic stem cell research are defining the embryo as a human non-person. Their basic principle is that it lacks certain characteristics which define a human person such as a working brain, size (they are smaller than--), sentience, appearance (they don't even have the beginnings of arms, legs,--), self-awareness, etc.
Therein lies the danger and it is extreme. If we can define “personhood” by its deficiencies – by what it lacks – how many of us are vulnerable? Terri Schiavo certainly was. Most brain injured persons are in danger. How about Alzheimer patients? The retarded? The paralyzed? Amputees? The blind? The deaf? (Careful now. That’s me we are talking about.)
Is this just paranoid thinking? Let’s look at what is happening today.
We have already referred to Terri Schiavo but there is mounting evidence that many doctors in the United States are already taking upon themselves the responsibility of ending lives which, in their estimation or that of relatives, have an inadequate “quality of life”. Human non-persons?
Today we are killing almost 90% of the preborn humans who are diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. Human non-persons? How many more human non-persons will we kill when Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) becomes able to detect more diseases?
Is this new bioethics new? Not really. In the second quarter of the last century (roughly 1920 to 1950) eugenics laws in this country enabled over 50,000 people to be sterilized if they were diagnosed as being mentally retarded. These laws, tested and approved by the Supreme Court of the United States, were not repealed until after similar horrors were uncovered in Germany. Human non-persons? In some cases we don't even have to kill these human non-persons. There are "other ways" to prevent them from burdening the rest of us.
Words mean things. The words “human non-person” means that society would be better off without that human being or, even more viciously, that society could use pieces of that human being to help more deserving human persons.