Lifenews seems to focus on pro-life issues which, given my views about technology, probably doesn’t seem like the first blog I’d read. But I do like to see what the people who think differently than I do are saying, and so whenever lifenews pops up on my ‘transhumanism’ Google feed I head over to see what’s going on.
In this case, Dr. Taylor is arguing that transhumanism, coupled with Roe v. Wade, is leading to a dystopia of eugenics and genetic engineering. In this, I think, Dr. Taylor is potentially half right. Unfortunately, Dr. Taylor either doesn’t understand the law she cites, or else is deliberately misrepresenting it to make a rhetorical point. For instance, she briefly mentions Roe v. Wade and then asserts that the case lead to the unborn having “no legal protection.” Because the unborn have no legal protection, she argues, immoral scientists can do what they want with them.
The first problem with Dr. Taylor’s argument is that it’s just wrong legally. First, Roe v. Wade hardly stripped all legal protection for the unborn; fetuses continued to be protected after the first trimester, and abortion could still be outlawed in the third trimester. Assuming Roe had stripped those protections, however, they would have been replaced in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the more recent abortion case that doesn’t pack the same rhetorical appeal. There, the Supreme Court decided that states could ban abortion past the point of viability, and institute processes that women must go through to undergo an abortion even prior to viability so long as the processes are not “unduly burdensome.” Outside of the abortion context, the unborn continue to enjoy widespread protection in criminal and tort contexts.
Dr. Taylor goes on argue that Roe lead to an “unregulated” market for fertility treatments; a term she equates with cloning and genetic enhancement. But a quick glance at US law shows that this simply isn’t so. Aside from state laws that regulate cloning, the FDA and other administrative agencies regulate many of the processes involved with human cloning and the FDA has publically stated that they will not allow research projects involving human cloning.
Putting aside the legal problems with Dr. Taylor’s argument, she goes on to list a parade of horribles stemming from this supposed lack of legal protection. But that argument, too, is based on a lot of outdated science. Mainly she seems concerned that researchers are using fetal stem cells, though she strongly implies that fetuses are aborted to supply these cells, instead of recognizing that stem cells from fetuses already aborted for other reasons are then used for medical research. Dr. Taylor seems to overlook the fact that we often use cadavers for medical research, or else distinguishes using parts of aborted fetuses from using parts of cadavers without explanation. Either way, using parts of our dead to help the living is a well-established and generally uncontroversial matter; our entire organ transplant system is based around just that idea.
Finally, Dr. Taylor spins into a diatribe about transhumanists, though she doesn’t really say much about why transhumanism is bad except that people might (gasp!) lop off their own limb to replace it with something better and that the divide between the haves and the have nots might widen (an issues, it’s worth mentioning, that transhumanists themselves are concerned about.)
It’s easy to argue against transhumanism when you’re misquoting law, using outdated science, and not bothering to connect ideas with logic. Indeed, many of the experts Dr. Taylor cites to say that the policies she’s decrying are the natural extension of current scientific and ethical policies.
I want to be clear about why I’m calling out this article. It’s not that I dislike Dr. Taylor, or disagree with everything she says even, but I abhor bad arguments. I don’t expect blog posts to look like academic articles (I’d be in trouble if that was the case) but I don’t think accurate is too high a bar to expect. It’s not just that articles like Dr. Taylor’s are wrong, it’s that they’re wrong and likely to influence public opinion with bad facts. And that, at the heart of it, is the problem. It’s also why, should I misrepresent something, I want people to correct me. We can have debates about human cloning, genetic engineering, and the divide between the haves and the have nots without resorting to bad law and bad facts. The ethical issues surrounding transhumanism are difficult enough to debate without also having to defuse straw man arguments. To make real progress in these ethical debates we have to remain intellectually honest.
An excellent example of a well written article exploring a transhumanist ethical problem is this article by Carolyn Abraham at The Globe and Mail. While I highly recommend reading the whole article for a serious debate about the merits of human cloning and genetic engineering, what I want to point out here is that the article is accurate, balanced, and presents both sides of the argument. I really look forward to well-reasoned arguments from people not as optimistic about technology as I am because I realize the world isn’t so black and white that this technology is obviously great or terrible. Reasonable minds could disagree with the conclusion (not made by the article) that the technology is good or bad, but they would be disagreeing based on accurate information. That’s the sort of debate we need, and the only thing that will help us come to any sort of conclusion about how to proceed in the future.
Image Source: http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/stemcell/overview.php.
