Daniel
Herbster reporting
Wesley
J. Smith is an influential writer and commentator who has dedicated his career
to preserving human dignity and educating his fellow man on the principles of
bioethics and justice. He is a senior
fellow at the Discovery Institute and a
special consultant to the Center for Bioethics
and Culture. He has also written a
number of books, and he blogs at Secondhand
Smoke. Smith was kind enough to
share with AdvanceUSA’s readers about important bioethics issues facing our society
today and about his work.
DH: Why are bioethics issues so important?
WJS: Bioethics is a contraction for “biomedical
ethics.” It is a field that has profound influence over core areas of human
endeavor that help establish and define the morality of society, and indeed,
the meaning of human life itself. Should elderly people have their health care
rationed? Is assisted suicide a proper
medical service? Is it right to create
cloned human embryos for use in research or to bring to birth? Is it wrong to abort fetuses because they
test positive for Down syndrome? Should parents be able to genetically enhance
their children? Are there morally relevant differences between humans and
animals? What should happen if a nurse
refuses to participate in an abortion or a physician wants to cut off wanted
life-sustaining medical treatment because the patient has a poor “quality of
life?” These and other equally important
bioethical issues are much larger than the sum of their parts because they
establish philosophical norms that exert tremendous influence upon society
beyond the policies themselves. Indeed,
I can think of few fields more important than bioethics in determining the kind
of society we shall become in the 21st century.
DH: What is “human exceptionalism” and how does
it relate to issues of life and justice?
WJS: Human exceptionalism refers to the sheer
moral importance and unique value of being human. I believe strongly that adhering to human
exceptionalism is the predicate to defending universal human rights. Indeed,
whether we accept or reject human exceptionalism may be the most important
issue we face as a culture. For if we say that simply being human is not what gives value to life, we have to
ask a second question: What does? That
second question leads directly to a system wherein those with power decide
which of us has greater--and which lesser—value, and who decides those who
don’t make muster. Thus, many in bioethics support “personhood theory,” which
denies the objective moral value of being human and claims that what matters morally
is being a “person,” a status earned
by possessing minimal cognitive capacities. In this view, there is such a thing
as a human “non person,” such as fetuses, newborns, and people who have lost
these capacities, such as Terri Schiavo.
Worse, because the human non person is defined as having lesser value,
they lose the right to life and, can be used instrumentally such as in medical
experimentation or as sources of organs.
Indeed, there is much agitation in bioethics and within the organ
transplant community to redefine death to include a diagnosis of persistent
vegetative state—meaning that if this view prevails, severely compromised
people could essentially be killed for their organs. This isn’t happening—yet—but the only way to
make sure that such policies are never instituted is to adhere to human
exceptionalism.