Eppur Si Muove

[nameandnature]

The views of the Roman Catholic Church on contraception are well known, although perhaps fewer people appreciate that they form part of a pro-life viewpoint (including opposition to capital punishment, for example) derived from the RCC's understanding of natural law. The current dire warnings on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill are, to the bishops sending the warnings, an obvious extension of these ideas. It's a bit less obvious to the rest of us, though.



Cardinal O'Brien's sermon betrays some misunderstandings about what the Bill allows. According to various source (including this one, from a real biologist on LJ), the "hybrid" embryos it allows are not going to be viable and would never be allowed to be implanted anywhere, so conjuring visions of ghastly chimeras is just plain scaremongering. Indeed, our LJ biologist objects to these things being characterised as embryos at all. What they seem to be (and I'd welcome comments from any other biologists out there) is factories for making cells of interest to researchers.

Like Yellow, I'm not sure how anyone knows what "natural" means in a technologically advanced world. Aquinas's natural law isn't merely the claim that anything which doesn't occur in nature is bad, but rather seems to be an attempt to start from things which are basic in nature and argue to an ethical stance on a particular issue. Starting off with "respecting human life is a good thing" and ending up with "this Bill is bad" is requires an excursion into RCC precedents for what "respecting human life" means, which come to some surprising conclusions that you'd struggle to get from the Bible, even (no little rubber devices on your John Thomas, no abortion despite the soul entering the body at birth, and so on). They're certainly not the sort of arguments you'd expect a secular legislature to take notice of, so I'm disturbed to see how much influence the bishops have over the British government. What was the Glorious Revolution for, you might wonder? (The commenter on the BBC's Have Your Say site who called for "disestablishment now!" seems to be a few hundred years behind the times).

A free vote seems the best way forward now, as the excellent editorial in the Times argues. If the bishops and their flock in Parliament do sink this thing, I hope we'll see a few MS sufferers picketing episcopal residences, as well as a few MPs who are unpleasantly surprised to learn that they made a courageous decision come the next election.

Comments

[briansloan.livejournal.com]

The Church's opposition to this Bill doesn't stem from the fear that some sort of frightening hybrid beast would in fact be created (although I accept that Cardinal O'Brien didn't express himself particularly well in that regard). Rather, as you have said, it sees human life as something that exists on a cellular level. On that basis, even if these cells are not viable embryos, they are still created by the manipulation of human life and the introduction of something foreign into human genetic material. If they don't look human to us, perhaps that is more of a defect in our perceptions rather than an argument for saying they are not human.

I have tried to oppose the Bill from a liberal perspective in the post you link to above (the one that drew the comment from my friend the biologist).

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I can't see where you draw a difference between culturing hybrid embryos that are incapable of getting anywhere near differentiated organisms (and are rendered as such before any human material is introduced), and culturing other human cell lines.

[briansloan.livejournal.com]

It is in the mixing of human DNA with material from lesser organisms, to produce something that might or might not be considered human material.

[nameandnature]

And why's that a problem? Lots of things are human material without being human. I don't feel the need to take special care of my toe-nail clippings.

The RCC has a stronger case when it talks about the treatment of fertilised human embryos, human foetuses and so on, because everyone agrees that these are at least potential persons, and even pro-choice people can see reasons why we'd want to be careful about what we did with them.

l_j_b says these hybrids are never going to be viable human embryos, and are not made with germline cells. Like pseudonomas, I'm puzzled about why the church sees them as anything other different from existing cell cultures. Is it because the description of the technique has the word "embryo" in it?

[briansloan.livejournal.com]

I would say that the problem has to do with the creation of a new entity, containing both human and animal material. As I said in my original post, I would not necessarily go as far as the Church and say that this should never be done. But I think there has to be a certain level of necessity, and an organism containing human material should be given the respect it deserves.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

It is in the mixing of human DNA with material from lesser organisms,
Why DNA? RNA isn't a problem? Proteins? DNA is a chemical that is basically used for protein sequence storage, not some mystical essence-of-personhood.

Besides, similar (as far as I can see) mixing goes on if (for instance) pig heart valves are transplanted into humans, or if bacteria are modified to produce human insulin, or if human cells are cultured on medium containing bovine serum.

that might or might not be considered human material
But we happily allow experiments on other human material - say on donated blood samples. And there's no ambiguity about whether these cell lines have the potential to develop into differentiated organisms - they don't.

So the problem (correct me if I'm wrong) isn't that you object because it's arguably human tissue, but because you don't have a rigorous description on what is or isn't human tissue.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Does anyone really expect the Catholic church to have a rigorous description of what constitutes "human life" (or "human tissue")? I certainly wouldn't expect them to. It's not as if the Bible says anything clear about this at all - it doesn't even indicate in any unambiguous sense whether a foetus is a separate human life.

It's a shame they can't say "We have no real idea how to define what it is, but this could be it...". If they said that their arguments would look a lot weaker I guess.

I suppose I'm trying to say that I don't have a problem with Catholics saying they feel uneasy about this, or making statements about how people should act with caution. What really annoys me is the way they speak authoritatively about something they clearly don't understand.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I'm asking sloanerf1 to speak for himself, not the Church. My understanding is that that is what he was doing anyway; I certainly don't think that dismissing someone's arguments because of their religious affiliation is either helpful or mannerly.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not dismissing anyone's arguments because of their religious affiliation. I was referring to the Catholic church, not to sloanerf1.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks for clarifying :)

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have made that clearer in my original post... it's just that your thoughts led to my thoughts so I though I'd reply to your comment.

With respect to dismissing people's arguments because of their religious affiliation, I find it very hard to be at CUAAS (http://www.cuaas.org.uk) because they seem to see me as the token religious person because I don't do that* :P

* I don't think they'd put it in quite those terms though...

[nameandnature]

The Bible doesn't have to say anything clear on it: if you're Catholic, the church has the authority to interpret the Bible and to come up with further doctrines which elaborate it. On the subject of contraception, for example, there's Humanae Vitae. I'd be surprised if there hadn't been some teaching within the church on the subject of genetic experimentation.

[briansloan.livejournal.com]

I think definition is indeed a problem in itself, but I would err on the side of the material being "human" and therefore worthy of respect.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Catholic church would get upset about someone who wanted to use my toenail clippings for research, or who wanted to prod a skin cell from me - so why are they upset about another individual cell?

It's clearly not the case that they think all human cells ought to be treated 'with respect' (I'm still unsure why a cell needs to be treated with respect, and how it is respectful to not try to cure disease). With cells that have the potential to become an entirely new human life I can kinda see their point, but these cells are not those kinds of cells, so what is the problem here?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

But why more so than any other human cell line, given that there's not the possibility of either becoming a person?