Johnson Column Was Not

An Honest Account

To the Editor:

I was offended by the column on embryonic stem cell (ESC) research signed by Nancy Johnson because of its patronizing tone, which made it sound as if it were written for children by a staff member who had just read an article on “Writing Persuasive Essays” and decided that anecdotes that bypassed the brain were the way to go. After all, which one of us would want to deny a sure cure for a suffering child, right? Of course right.

The issues are very complex, and I would prefer an honest account that treats constituents as educated, thoughtful, fellow citizens. For example:

Where is the information on the successful use of umbilical cord and adult stem cells, which does not require creating embryos to destroy? Where is the information from medical journals like The Lancet that say that so far there have been no successful cures from embryonic stem cells? I may very well be willing to agree that “only” embryonic cells will work in the future if presented with scientific fact, not, as The Lancet put it, “hype.” I have read hundreds of pages on this issue and some of what I see are deliberate lies: I recently read that one congressman said that there have been no cures from adult/umbilical cells and many from embryonic ones, when, in fact (Google it!) the exact reverse is true!

As the movie All the President’s Men aptly put it, “follow the money.” How much of the legislation was influenced (if not actually written!) by biotech companies who would do anything to get their hands on human embryos, and if with taxpayer money, so much the better?

And whose idea was it to use the phrase “the moral responsibility to pursue every ethical avenue of discovery” to cure diabetes, without ever defining either “moral” or “ethical?” This is question-begging, since the morality is one of the very questions at issue. Are those who disagree with ESC research —and they include many scientists — unethical? I can only assume that is because the column writer believes that the only ethics worth talking about are the ethics of utility.

But the utilitarian theory is not the only ground for ethical decisionmaking. Some people might be shocked — shocked! — to learn that there are other ways to reason ethically, even ways that are not based on religion; otherwise we would have to argue, wrongly, that atheists and agnostics could not be moral people. I have met feminist atheists opposed to abortion because it is an act of violence; Democratic atheists opposed to ESC research because their ethics are Kantian — they believe that it is the first stage of a slippery slope that causes human beings to be treated as means, not ends, which is never morally acceptable, and which, in fact, is irrational; and liberal atheists who object to the commodifying of humans because it leads to Brave New World and Gattaca — a denial of human freedom.

I can’t believe Johnson wrote this, and I would have more respect for it had it made any attempt to treat her constituents as reasoning adults, not like rubes who can be pacified by — well, pacifiers.

Mary Taylor

Jeremiah Road, Sandy Hook                                           June 21, 2005