During a lecture, Nobel prize-winning* physicist Richard Feynman once said, regarding science, ethics, killing, and war...

I think that science and moral questions are independent. The common human problem, the big question, always is "Should I do this?" Its a question of action. "What should I do? Should I do this?" And how can we answer such a question? We can divide it into two parts. We can say, "If I do this what will happen?" That doesn't tell me whether I should do this. We still have another part, which is "Well, do I want that to happen?" In other words, the first question -- "If I do this what will happen?" -- is a least susceptible to scientific investigation; in fact, it is a typical scientific question... But the question "Do I want this to happen" -- in the ultimate moment -- is not. Well, you say, if I do this, I see that everbody is killed, and of course, I don't want that. Well, how do you know you don't want people killed? You see at the end you must have some ultimate judgement.

He continues:

You could take a different example. You could say, for instance, "If I follow this economic policy, I see there is going to be a depression, and of course, I don't want a depression." Wait. You see, only knowing that it is a depression doesn't tell you that you do not want it. You have then to judge whether the feelings of power you would get from this, whether the importance of the country moving this direction is better than the cost of the people who are suffering. Or maybe there would be some sufferers and not others. And so there must at the end be some ultimate judgement somewhere along the line as to what is valuable, whether people are valuable, whether life is valuable. Deep in the end -- you may follow the argument further along -- but ultimately you have to decide "Yeah, I want that" or "No I don't." And the judgement is of a different nature. I do not see how knowing what will happen alone it is possible to know if ultimately you want the last of the things. I believe, therefore, that it is impossible to decide moral questions by the scientific technique, and that the two things are independent.

If science and moral judgements are independent, then it follows that an expert in the science, the "what will happen" of, say, stem cell research (or fetal development) isn't necessarily an expert in the implied ethical questions: "What should we do? What tradeoffs are acceptable to make? What do we, the public, want?"

Automatically crediting a scientist with a special authority on the moral implications of their research is what's called the false authority fallacy -- where an authority is quoted, but not an authority on the matter in question. In reality he or she is typically no more a moral authority than you or I -- or perhaps even less so because of the vested monetary interest the scientist may have in certain avenues of research being permitted or funded.

So let's use our own powers of reason, shall we? Or at least I'll do so, publicly, since that's part of the fun and responsibility of blogging.

Its hard, in my experience, to have a discussion about embryonic stem cell research without tangentially or directly discussion abortion. Of course: We're discussing the fate of a fetus, a nascent human life, if not an actual one. In both cases, we can bring up arguments about convience, benefits, probabilities, and saving lives. And once we decide something is moral, immoral, or unknowable, we must decide, regardless of that answer, what our public policy should be.

Some are absolutely convinced that life begins at conception; others argue that until the fetus receives its social security number, it should not be considered a person. Me, I hold a third stance: I claim that I don't know. (And suspect most others don't know either.)

One might think such a position to be uncontroversial, but believe me, it has been... and it's often the "pro-choice" people who are the most upset about my, and their own (since I ask "But how do you know?) "agnosticism" in this area.

Why? Because the reasoning must proceed, as far as I can see, along these lines:

There's only two primary ways to think about "When a person becomes a person." The first is to believe that we, the people, have no inalienable rights -- meaning all rights, including personhood itself, are a social construction, bestowed if and when the state (or other collective) decides to grant them. And thus the state is also able to un-grant (i.e. revoke) "personhood" from people -- to have moral authority to declare them non-persons.

To understand the kind of society this assumption tends to produce, one need only to look to governments which have held this philosophy: China, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany, to name a few. Those of you still wanting to argue this position can stay after class and chat.

For the rest of us, who happen to agree with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, we have to ask the question: "If people are granted inalienable rights -- then, at what stage of development are they granted? And what do we do if we don't actually know the answer in precise detail?"

To help myself consider the morality of dealing with something which may or may not be a "person" (at each point in development), I considered a cardboard box which might, or might not, contain a human being -- say, a small child.

What can I do to this box which may, or may not, contain a small person? Can I destroy it? Would that be ethical?

What if there's another life at stake? Say there's a woman locked in a cell over to one side, and unless I press this "Destroy Box" button, and destroy it and its contents, she's going to be killed. In this case, it seems I'm trading a certain life for a potential life. I can understand that tradeoff. But if I'm not certain the woman will really die if I leave the box intact, or, conversely, that she will still live even if I do not destroy the box, then I'm faced with a murkier picture: I have to weigh probabilities and take the action least likely to result, as best as I can tell, in bloodshed.

Now what about cases where something less than another human life is at stake. What about if I'm paid money to destroy the box? Some guy says: "Here's a box. A kid might be in it. Here's a million bucks and an Uzi. Fire away and you get the cash." Would that be ethical? Or, conversely, he's going to put me in jail for nine months if I don't shoot up the box. Is that moral?

Let's say I ask him, "What are the odds there's a person in it?" What if he says 50/50? Should I shoot the box then? What about one in four? One in ten? One in a hundred? When does it become acceptable for us to engage in a behavior which could potentially take an innocent life for our own convenience?

Drunk driving, a discretionary activity which has the potential to take a life, is widely considered immoral and is also illegal, punishable by jail time. The odds of being killed by a drunk driver in the US are about 1 in 18,000 annually. So we have laws banning activities with as little as 1/18,000 chance of taking a life. Are we sure embryonic stem cell research (or abortion) has an even lower chance than that?

The most disturbing aspect of the position many embryonic stem cell research proponents take is the failure to consider whether they are, in fact, advocating taking nascent human life on a massive research scale. The answer is assumed prima facie to be no, but when pressed, advocates cannot explain on what basis they are assured of their morality. They resort to descriptions: "Its a blastocyte" or "Its just a few hundred cells when we start" rather than ethical reasoning. But we can't, as Feynman points out, arrive at morality merely by describing processes; the central question remains unaddressed. And that's no way to make policy.

In the case of embryonic stem cell research, the refusal to think clearly is even more disturbing, since there's an alternative which is far less ethicially troublesome: research on adult stem cells.

The argument is posed that unless the U.S. federal government specifically funds embryonic stem cell research, scientific progress will come to a screeching halt: research will not occur. Of course, this is absurd. If I say you cannot have pie you don't stop eating. Likewise, if we encourage embryonic stem cell research, then adult stem cell research will be discouraged. And vise-versa.

The way we heard the debate positioned, we also might assume embryonic stem cells are some amazing fountain of youth -- a uniquely promising, astounding source of scientific progress and health that we're morons for neglecting. Yes?

No, actually. Adult stem cells, found in many places in the body in good quantity, are easier to obtain than embryonic stem cells. And scientists have good reason to believe they'll be able to be used for the same applications as embryonic stem cells. Next, all treatments based around adult stem cells have a huge advantage over embryonic stem cells -- since the adult stem cells can be taken from the patient's own body, there are no worries about rejections -- as would be the case with organs or tissue grown from embryonic stem cells. Last, in terms of practical results, I have encountered several many successful applications of adult stem cells. I have not encountered similar successes from embryonic stem cells.

So we have this odd situation, in which the more promising, ethical type of research is being degraded and ignored in the (vocal) scientific community, while a more ethically troublesome, less-promising type of research is whined loudly for, much as a spoiled child whines about not getting candy in the supermarket checkout line.

So I have serious ethical concerns about embryonic stem cell research, and feel that other alternatives should be pursued first.

* Feynman would have wanted you to disregard that accolade, and not accept his authority but think for yourself instead -- but I quote him because I realize even -- or perhaps especially -- self-fashioned "scientific" types will more readily accept an argument you can quote an authority saying it. He's not an authority in this area, but I hope you'll accept the quote because it makes sense, as he would have wanted you to, not because some Swedish gentlemen gave him some paper. [return]