“Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.”
Although Charles Krauthammer is wrong on where to draw the line in stem cell research, I think you will find his stance against President Obama’s stance a must read. Krauthammer is “not religious” and so to his mind sees no definitive guideline as to when person-hood is bestowed. To my mind the science of it tells the tale. Peering into the beginning moments of life with powerful cameras records the change from ova and sperm entities to new being with all the where-with-all to command the hormones and functions of the mother’s body to make possible its continuance and growth. It has not only presence but power to command.
The Truth of the matter, and our relationship to the Creator from the instant of our becoming a unique individual at the conjoining of ovum and sperm, is still hidden from Krauthammer. It does help to have the Truth that is revealed by the Creator through the Scriptures, the Church and the Tradition of both Church and Man (Natural Law.) I leave this as another issue for another day. Krauthammer does believe in Evil. He opposes Obama’s replacing Bush’s line with “no line at all.”
This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of “science” and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom. [My emphasis]
Though Krauthammer does not know when to confer person-hood, he says:
“I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research — a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.
Krauthammer judges Obama as morally arrogant in the extreme, dismissing “his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.” Or so Obama expects us to believe.
Krauthammer says of President George W. Bush:
“Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.”
I am reminded of the recent movie, I Am Legion, a futuristic nightmare with basis in possibility if not history for a scenario of science run amok. Krauthammer concludes his dismembering of Obama’s so called reasoned logic:
Dr. James Thomson, the pioneer of embryonic stem cells, said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” Obama clearly has not.
“Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.”
Into Stillness 