Supposing information from embryonic experiments proved to be useful, would it be ethical to us it? M.P., Toronto, Ontario.
It is useful to look at a similar case.
While doing post-graduate work in Arctic Studies in the 1950’s, I had access to accounts of the Nazi doctors’ experiments on the effects of cold on the human body.
The victims, stark naked, were fitted with sensors and subjected to increasingly lower temperatures while their heartbeats, skin and rectal temperatures, blood pressure, blood composition, effects of shivering, respiration, etc., were measured and recorded. One aim was to learn the limit of cold a human being could stand and still be brought back from death.
Barbarous as these experiments were, they did provide information useful in certain types of surgery; information which has been used. The position of medical ethicists has been that “once something is known it cannot be unknown,” and that if knowledge (however it was obtained) can be used to save life or prevent suffering it would be wrong not to use it.
If embryonic experimentation yields any information beneficial to mankind – however repugnant such experimentation might be – I believe that medical ethicists will say that the knowledge could (perhaps should) be used.
Friends who are not pro-abortion say that abortions will always happen, so why do we waste our time and money trying to get a law to stop them? D.B., Chatham.
• There will always be thieves, murderers, terrorists and rapists. Does anyone seriously suggest that we therefore abolish laws against theft and murder? In fact, laws are needed because there are thieves and rapists.
• “The law is a great teacher.” It tells the people what the rules are for a civilized society. A law forbidding abortion emphasizes that the killing of an innocent human being is a grievous offence.
• Pro-lifers believe that the time, effort and money spent in trying to save babies from being torn apart, and their mothers from the anguish they will feel later, is well worth it. Pro-lifers may not always succeed, but they have tried, and that knowledge carries its own reward.
Isn’t a fetus just an incomplete baby? S.J., Sarnia, Ontario.
No.
He fetus is complete and so indeed was the earlier embryo. From the very first cell everything is there, and nothing will be added until death. Only time, nutrition and shelter are needed for growth and development.
A month-old baby is not an incomplete toddler. He or she is a perfect baby.
A toddler is a prefect toddler and not an incomplete teenager.
A fetus is not an incomplete newborn, toddler, teenager or adult; he or she is a perfect and complete fetus, all systems present and functioning.
Why was Nancy Cruzan starved to death? I thought the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled to save her. B.S., Bradford, Ontario.
The judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court in Cruzan – a very narrow judgment – upheld a Missouri law which ruled that without clear and convincing evidence that a patient has stated that he or she would not wish to be kept alive by artificial means (such as a respirator or naso-gastric feeding tube) such treatment cannot be withdrawn.
The Court ruled that the evidence submitted regarding Nancy Cruzan’s wishes was neither clear nor convincing.
The downside to this judgment, as some pro-lifers noted at the time, was that it seemed to assume that in Missouri a clear statement might authorize family or guardian to bring about the early death of a patient by depriving him or her of food and water.
In line with this, the Cruzan family returned to the Missouri Courts with fresh evidence that Nancy would have wanted to die. The judge accepted the testimony and thus, in effect, signed her death warrant.
