The Vultures of Life (Stem Cell Veto)

When I was a child, I remember a National Geographic article about a Buddhist sect so respectful of life that its members took care not to step on insects as they walked.  Like many people, I confess that I’ve not followed the stem cell controversy all that carefully except to note that the word “blastocyst” needs to be changed if those who see this as the frontier of the anti-abortion movement really want to romanticize embryonic cells as sentient life.  I have, however listened to the rhetoric around embryonic stem cell research and if you knew nothing else about these folk who were talking about the sanctity of life, you would assume that they lived the rest of their life like those Buddhist monks.  Obviously it would be more than a little weird to learn that those same Buddhist monks operated a slaughterhouse or that half of them were serial killers.  Most of us would ask, “What would be the point of worrying about accidentally stepping on ants if you so wantonly kill creatures who are clearly sentient and communicative?”

When the President vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act last week, I wasn’t surprised from a political perspective.  I’m pretty sure that if part of his hardcore base insisted  that the stars and sun revolved around the earth, he would endorse legislation making it so.  I did read his veto statement though and found myself trying to apply some of what he says about the “culture of life”, which I interpret as protecting human life as long as you can fit it in a culture dish, to the rest of Administration policy.  For instance, could this really be the same people who are presiding over an invasion of Iraq where 100 civilians have died a day over the last two months?  Could it be the same Congress who overwhelmingly endorsed Israel’s right of self-defense to include killing 300 civilians?  Are these the same people who support the death penalty when DNA testing repeatedly reveals that we’ve executed more than a few people who were actually innocent?  

I wouldn’t call myself a practicing Buddhist, but their perspective at least makes some sense to me.  They talk about mindfulness, respect for life, and the interconnected web of cause and effect put into play by any of our choices.  When it comes to something like abortion, the Buddhists wouldn’t question the idea that a fetus is a potential life and certainly they would stress that we must take responsibility for all of our actions (both father and mother), but they also recognize that decisions about life aren’t simple.  One does not necessarily just draw a line and say “life begins here” and we must protect it at any cost.  The world and life is much more complicated than that since one must both respect life and respect the right and need of others to make mindful choices.  Interestingly, there’s almost no history of Buddhists starting wars.  

My issue with the whole stem cell debate in America is that there’s little to no perspective on how it fits in to the rest of our culture.  If we back off enough, we look less like a “culture of life” than “vultures of life”  (that may be an insult to vultures who do the ecosystem an enormous service).  Whether or not we defend embryonic stem cells has no impact on the bigger picture.  We live with and promote policies that actively disdain the value of life in any larger truer sense.  

Years ago, I also read a book (whose title escapes me) that argued that our notion of ourselves as a single sentient being is peculiar.  We walk around with any number of organisms living on or inside of us.  When we get a rash for instance, most of us think nothing of eradicating it with whatever means necessary because we tell ourselves that it’s our body.  As I’ve looked at the whole matter of embryonic stem cells, it’s clear to me that the philosophical and ethical questions are much more complex than either side has been willing to admit to.  But to worry about our society, our own body politic if you will and evaluating its “culture of life” at a microscopic level is deeply misguided.  

Most of America should understand by now that the current administration has permitted the deaths of thousands of people based on gross misrepresentation of the facts.  When seen from any sensible perspective, its talk about ethics around embryonic stem cell research and balancing the needs of science with a deep respect for life is really much closer to Hitler being a vegetarian than it is to Buddhist monks not stepping on insects.  







  


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