During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity
of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific,
technological, and demographic developments. By 2040, it may
be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists
will defend the view that every human life, from conception
to death, is sacrosanct.
In retrospect, 2005 may be seen as the year in which that position
became untenable. American conservatives have for several years
been in the awkward position of defending a federal funding
ban on creating new embryos for research that prevents U. S.
scientists from leading an area of biomedical research that
could revolutionize the treatment of many common diseases. When
they are honest, conservatives acknowledge that giving up some
medical advances is simply the price to be paid for doing the
right thing.
This year, however, that view became much more uncomfortable.
South Korean researchers showed that human stem cells can be
cloned by replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized human egg
with the nucleus of an ordinary cell. The South Korean breakthrough
poses a stark challenge to the conservative position. The possibility
of cloning from the nucleus of an ordinary cell undermines the
idea that embryos are precious because they have the potential
to become human beings. Once it becomes clear that every human
cell contains the genetic information to create a new human
being, the old arguments for preserving "unique" human
embryos fade away.
The year 2005 is also significant, at least in the United States,
for ratcheting up the debate about the care of patients in a
persistent vegetative state. The long legal battle over the
removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube led President George
W. Bush and the U. S. Congress to intervene, both seeking to
keep her alive. Yet the American public surprised many pundits
by refusing to support this intervention, and the case produced
a surge in the number of people declaring they did not wish
to be kept alive in a situation such as Schiavo's.
Technology will drive this debate. As the sophistication of
techniques for producing images of soft tissue increases, we
will be able to determine with a high degree of certainty that
some living, breathing human beings have suffered such severe
brain damage that they will never regain consciousness. In these
cases, with the hope of recovery gone, families and loved ones
will usually understand that even if the human organism is still
alive, the person they loved has ceased to exist. Hence, a decision
to remove the feeding tube will be less controversial, for it
will be a decision to end the life of a human body, but not
of a person.
As we approach 2040, the Netherlands and Belgium will have
had decades of experience with legalized euthanasia, and other
jurisdictions will also have permitted either voluntary euthanasia
or physician-assisted suicide for varying lengths of time. This
experience will puncture exaggerated fears that the legalization
of these practices would be a first step toward a new holocaust.
By then, an increasing proportion of the population in developed
countries will be more than 75 years old and thinking about
how their lives will end. The political pressure for allowing
terminally or chronically ill patients to choose when to die
will be irresistible.
When the traditional ethic of the sanctity of human life is
proven indefensible at both the beginning and end of life, a
new ethic will replace it. It will recognize that the concept
of a person is distinct from that of a member of the species
Homo sapiens, and that it is personhood, not species membership,
that is most significant in determining when it is wrong to
end a life. We will understand that even if the life of a human
organism begins at conception, the life of a person-that is,
at a minimum, a being with some level of self-awareness-does
not begin so early. And we will respect the right of autonomous,
competent people to choose when to live and when to die.
Peter
Singer is the author of Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics,
How Are We to Live?, and Rethinking Life and Death.
