Embryo case study: ethics decision process

Here is more about moral ethics, using the embryonic stem cell research controversy as the case study. In other words, I am going to give you some general moral and ethics guidance, and you can see how to apply that moral guidance to the specific example of embryonic stem cell research.

The first point that I want to make, stated as a principle that everyone should strive to follow, is this: When alternative actions are available, always start first with the most morally and ethically conservative position, and if that is not successful, move step by step toward the more questionable, also known as the “slippery slope.”

If I had a sketch pad capability here I’d draw a picture that on the left side has the label “Most morally conservative and highly ethical option.” On the right side I’d label the diagram “Totally slippery slope that could lead into very unmoral and unethical options.” I’d actually draw what looks like that wintry icy slippery slope where at the bottom are outlines of rocks that represent decisions and options of potential moral and ethic breakdown.

So then in the middle of the picture you can draw some columns, unlabeled and empty, just like a blank spreadsheet, and they represent the possible actions that are increasingly morally and ethically questionable, those options you have not yet identified or if you have, you have not yet pursued.

Let’s use a mundane example of how to use this chart. Suppose you wish to obtain a house in which to live. Your first choice ought to be the highly ethical and moral option, the far left column, of purchasing or building a house. Your first choice is the most moral and ethical purchase of a house at a good price with all legal and ethical requirements totally fulfilled. That should, obviously, be your first thought of action. However, suppose you totally lack any morality or ethics and still need a house? This would be the extreme right hand column. You might get a gun, kill the occupants of the house that you want, and move into their house. That is the opposite extreme of the highest morality and ethics, which is to purchase a house using good and fair bargaining and honest merchandising and legal safeguards. The opposite of that is to covet someone else’s house, kill them, and take their house.

In business most normal people of course start with the highly moral and routine transaction of seeking a house that one can legally and fairly purchase. However, in this society, increasingly people have some twists to the most ethical option, which are some of those blank columns in the middle. For example you could collude with the real estate agent to cheat the home seller of some of their home’s value. That would be a column that is nearer to the ethical best of honest bargaining and purchase, but has inched toward the slippery slope. People today are, sadly and incorrectly, much more comfortable with such options that are not of the totally correct, but are one or two steps toward the slippery slope. Another example is to obtain a house that you could not afford in return for doing something legally or morally questionable, such as you receive the house at a reduced cost because you engaged in something like industrial espionage for someone. That’s another step toward the slippery slope. Yet another example of stepping toward the slippery slope is to jack up house prices, or, conversely, trash a neighborhood so that you behind the scenes manipulate the desirability of the community within which the house you want resides.

In the “old days” of classic capitalism no one would have even thought of those options. People built houses and people bought as much house as they wanted and could afford, and that was that. But in these wily and “make a killing” and “get the most for yourself” modern mindsets, far more people think that shady steps that are toward but not totally on the slippery slope are morally and ethically “fair game.” They think these are options that the “free market” ethos endorses as being acceptable in ethics.

So that is an example that is easy to understand of how to understand where one individually is, or where society is, for any given issue on the total ethics/morality-to-total slippery slope of moral/ethic breakdown continuum of options.

Now, let’s use this chart as an example regarding embryonic stem cell research. But before diving into it, let’s look at the decision that is one step in front of the one now being discussed. At some point when it was discovered that infertile women could receive implanted embryos, one did not start with the most conservative position. The most conservative position would have been to create two and only two embryos and implant both of them. If both became viable the lady had twins. If one failed the other would develop and the lady would have a child. If both embryos failed it is like a miscarriage where for some reason birth circumstances just were not naturally correct. That is what should have been the standard procedure and there should not have been “bank vaults” of numerous embryos which are planted and “culled” like weeds in a field. Thus one would not have the embryos lying around frozen “which are just going to get thrown away anyways” in the first place if the most highly moral and ethic standard was followed in the first place. People did not think through the entire ethics and morality of the scientific gift of embryo creation and implant in the first place, which is to stick to the natural model in the first place. The natural model is one embryo and, often two, as is common when a woman has twins. Embryonic creation and implantation should have stuck to that model.

This is why the Catholic Church opposes these procedures because they perceive, correctly, that it leaped in one bound from a loving and desirable fixing of a medical condition (infertility) to factory line manufacturing of throw away embryos. If people had gone for the most conservative moral and ethical implementation, as I describe here, in the first place, the Church would have been much more able to tolerate the medical goodness of what is being attempted. However, in one leap embryonic development and implanting left the natural model and made embryos throw away commodities. That was a grave moral and ethical lapse, and put everyone squarely into the slippery slope of sin.

So that is an example of how individuals and society ought to be able to start with the most conservative moral and ethic position and thus prevent further disastrous ethics down the line. If ethics were followed in the first place we’d not have those “poor embryos that are just going to remain frozen or tossed out anyways, so let’s conduct experiments on them” argument.

Likewise, when researching any illness or infirmity one should always start with the most conservative moral and ethical options and as they either result in steps toward a cure, or do not pan out, then cautiously step one increment at a time toward the “right” side of the chart. We have lost years of research on NON-embryonic stem cell research (much of which, doctors attest, look more promising in results today than do the embryonic sources) because people decided to dive into the middle, even the total slippery slope side, before fully exploring the first and ultimately, most likely, productive research options. There should have been massive funding of adult stem cell and non-embryonic (such as umbilical cord) research for the past several decades rather than the immediate embrace of the embryonic route. The terrible irony is that if the more moral and ethical choice were made from the start and vigorously funded, Michael J. Fox and other celebrity sufferers and advocates of progress toward cures might actually have been seeing some progress in those cures today.

People might respond to me, “Well, we should try all options at the same time.” Be real, please. You know that funding is fought over and scarce and not all options can be funded, especially as this balloon economy is imploding. An abundance of funding should have been poured for the past twenty years or more into the most conservative ethic and moral options, research into non-embryonic stem cell and other sources of cures, rather than starving what ultimately will probably be the most successful route, discovered only after so much of the country, including Nancy Reagan, can only think of the most morally questionable route to help the suffering and think that this is the highest ethics.

So modern people have, without their own conscious realization, settled their ethical and moral “homes” dangerously far into the slippery slope and don’t even realize that there is a scientifically valid approach that starts with the most moral and ethical scientific options first. Not to be too extreme, but it is like, well, “I need that house more than you, and I have a good reason, so I’ll just shoot you and take the house.” It no longer occurs to people, in the stem cell debate, to start with the ethical and moral equivalent of what should be the norm, which is to start with the most conservative scientific research position, to look at adult supplied research solutions, such as using the adults own stem cells, or from umbilical cords, skin cells, placentas, whatever. But no, everyone is immediately assuming that the only “cure” must come from embryos being experimented upon, researched and destroyed. I cannot understand how people cannot see this. Well, this is why I have explained using the “chart” approach how to better understand how it is that we are in this sorrowful position. I believe that if people had funded non-embryonic research from the very beginning fully and most vigorously that we’d have today the beginning of some of those much craved breakthroughs today. Instead people are actually cheering doing more embryonic “work” instead of realizing they’ve not funded the most likely cure routes at all. Who are REALLY the “compassionate” ones? If I had had it my way we’d have breakthroughs without using embryos by now. I don’t blame President Obama because the people just will not see until they fully crash on the rocks on the slippery slope, and when they look up from the crash, find there’s no cure that way either.

And by the way, here is my last thought about the “we are going to throw the embryos out anyway so let’s use them.” Not too long ago animal shelters sold or gave abandoned pets to medical researchers. "After all, the dogs or cats were going to be euthanized anyway, so let’s give them to laboratories for humanitarian research.” Pets were even stolen out of yards by people who sold them to animal laboratories, so great was the demand for dogs and cats to experiment on until they died. It was one of the great scandals of the 1970’s and an area of early activism. Pounds stopped, due to public outrage, giving abandoned pets “that are just going to be destroyed anyway” to laboratories to use them in experimentation. Using today’s logic, I guess we should have kept giving abandoned animals to research laboratories to experiment upon rather than stop that practice. So, sure, “Got embryos ‘anyway?’ Let’s experiment on them rather than ‘just’ destroy them.” When one has residents of a concentration camp anyway, and they are going to die anyway, why not do some good ‘humanitarian’ experimenting? That is the slippery slope of that thinking, and those of us old enough to remember the fight against using abandoned animals for laboratory experimentation, “since they are just going to die anyway” remember a higher ethical and moral society when people, repulsed, said “No,” even though those abandoned animals were “just destroyed.” Or, rather than waste those abandoned animal carcasses, why not skin "Fido" and "Kitty" and let the pounds sell euthanized dog and cat fur in order to raise money? That is the mindset of not wanting to just "throw out" embryos without "putting them to good use." Can you not see how repulsive the slippery slope is? I hope that you young people in particularly understand your ethical options more as I described the abandoned animal experimentation battle that took place before your time.

Correction about frozen embryo confusion

I have read that some very loving and well meaning Catholics have trouble with Catholic doctrine opposing the creation and use of human embryos. For example, these Catholics question why they should not "rescue" frozen embryos that were created for someone else's in vitro fertilization and is no longer needed, and thus are kept frozen indefinitely or discarded.

I think people need to be very clear about one thing before the dialogue (and disagreement) continues.

The Church is correct to state that frozen embryos have "dignity." This is a very precise word that does not imply they have a soul. As I've blogged about this before, but to re-summarize, a soul is created by God and given to an embryo at the moment that it is created and "quickens." This means that the embryo must be attached to the mother's womb and making its first cell division of life. God does not put souls in inanimate objects, such as a frozen embryo. The Church is very wise to use the term "dignity" because even though the frozen embryo is not yet living it is full of the potential for a human real life and thus it has the full dignity of its potential. As such it must be guarded as diligently as a living embryo. This is why the Church correctly opposes the existence of frozen embryos, regardless of the good intentions of the would-be parents. When one has a frozen embryo one has in uncommitted hands the full potential of a life with dignity. Fortunately God, in his wisdom, does not allow humans to play God and have souls placed in frozen inanimate potential humans.

Thus someone who "rescues" a frozen embryo cannot do so by justifying that the embryo has a frozen soul in there. Good grief, humans have already made a horror show of life, can you imagine if souls were actually "freezable" in embryos? Only humans can think of such a scenario, not God.

Having said that, even "without a soul" the embryo is entitled to full dignity because it, like all embryos, are a "promise" from God, a promise that a human life with soul comes into being if the embryo is unfrozen, implanted in a woman and quickens into life. If the embryo does not naturally take to the placenta and quicken then it never received the soul.

Thus I fully understand why the Church is discouraging the enabling of what they consider to be an initial wrong, the creation of a "just in case we ever want to use it" embryo that is frozen and thus robbed of its dignity, with a questionable but well intentioned intervention of adopting a frozen embryo and implanting it.

The Church is correctly concerned of two problems with frozen embryo adoption. One is that humans assume that they can invoke an embryo and a soul and freeze it, thus making people who are horrified at this scenario feel pressured to act to "rescue the frozen soul." That is science fiction, not reality. No souls are frozen in human embryos. So the Church is worried that frozen embryo rescuers have an erroneous and very painful and alarming view of the frozen embryo as not just having dignity, which it has, but a trapped frozen soul, which it does not.

The second problem the Church is concerned with is providing a moral escape hatch for an immoral practice. Thus instead of those who produce frozen embryos having the onus on them of doing something wrong, the faithful are felt that if they don't intervene with adoption that they are allowing a horror to continue (the embryo being frozen indefinitely or discarded). To use an example, the comedy magazine "National Lampoon" once had on the cover the photograph of a cute dog with a gun being held to its head, the caption reading "Buy this magazine or we will shoot this dog!" That was, obviously, an example of subversive humor, satire and irony rolled into one. This was a long time ago but I think I remember that in the inside of the magazine they had a photograph of the dog lying down with the caption, "We shot it anyway."

This is a trivial but wise in human understanding, this ironic humor from years ago, of how to "transfer guilt and complicity." It is one of Satan's favorite tools. It allows someone to initiate the sin and then force through guilt and good intentions someone else to take "moral" responsibility for "fixing" the original wrong and sin. The Church is correctly very alert and wise to this tool of Satan's, to transfer guilt from the guilty to the innocent.

Trust the judgment of the Church for they know well this device. Refuse to be the one who is "handed the guilt" of someone else's wrong doing, bad judgment or sin.

This is not to say that someone who adopts a frozen embryo and brings a child to term has now committed the sin of the people who created the frozen embryo in the first place. However, they have inadvertently provided moral "cover" to the people who did so, not in God's eyes, but in the secular world's eyes, thus removing impetus to re-evaluate and correct a moral problem such as frozen embryos. This is nothing new except in the subtlety of the temptation to take responsibility for "fixing" someone else's ongoing wrong.

This is an important distinction. You can fix a wrong or a sin that has happened and is completed. You cannot fix a wrong or a sin that is ongoing. The ongoing sin, wrong or error must be re-evaluated and corrected, not enabled by the just taking responsibility for perpetuation of the actions of the unjust.

For example, you would rescue a starving person and feed them. But you would not agree to allow a family to starve their child, and you visit once a week to give the child just enough food to keep on clinging to life. That is the difference between correcting a wrong and enabling a wrong. In such a scenario the abusers could argue that you agree that starvation of a child is acceptable, and that if the child dies it is your fault because you did not show up on time for the once a week giving of just enough sustenance for the child to continue to survive.

Listen to the Church, for she is wise in these ways of Satan and of weak and sinful humans. Do not accept responsibility for a wrong that is ongoing and if anything increasing.

I hope that you have found this helpful; this transfer of guilt from the unjust to the just is one of the fundamental moral crises of modern humanity and one must be wise and vigilant to not co-depend and enable error, bad judgment (even if "well intended") and ultimately sinfulness and lack of dignity throughout the whole process of life.

AND, no, I would not "feel different" about it if it were "my own embryos." If anything I would be more determined that they should be discarded since I have never given permission for my eggs to be kept and frozen, nor would I have ever given permission, nor would I have ever given permission for being part of a frozen embryo. Thus if anyone did that "behind my back" as the result of the surgeries I had, I would be the first to insist that they be respectfully discarded because the only reason someone does this type of thing behind someone's back is for occult reasons. I would never consider for one second having a "different" view of this matter and if anything, I would point to the grave moral peril that all who engage in these activities are in.

Embryo and soul

I've blogged about this before but it bears repeating. In the Bible it affirms that God states that he "knew" the person before he or she was born. That is true. Before they were born. Not before they were conceived.

Souls are not floating in heaven waiting for the next greased chute into life. Souls are created by God at precisely the same stage of life for each and every person. That is when the egg is fertilized by the sperm, becomes an embryo, attaches to the inner womb of the woman, and "quickens" (makes its first cell division of growth that it is alive). It is at that precise moment that God creates the soul to match that embryo as it makes its first pulse of life attached in the mother's womb. There is no question about this at all.

As usual you have to take my word for it, but you can really prove this through logic, if you choose to do so. We all know that every human has a guardian angel. Jesus affirms this in the Gospel, so Christians are fully aware of the guardian angel truth of their faith. Now, when would God send the guardian angel? Would he wait until the baby pops out of the womb? I mean, who needs a guardian angel during the first nine months of life, right? Of course not. God gives the guardian angel to the child at the embryo's first pulse of life. He obviously doesn't have guardian angels hanging around inside the womb or willie just waiting in case a baby comes along, LOL. So the guardian angels are not there "in advance" of the baby's existence as a embryo. Likewise, they don't drop in on the baby after the mother's been pregnant, ignoring the pre-born baby as it's mom takes crack, or decides to have an abortion, or if there is a risky pregnancy, and, obviously, through the every day miracle of a good and blessed gestation of a much loved and wanted pre-born child. Logic dictates that the guardian angel is sent to the baby at the baby's first inception as a living individual being, when it takes its first cellular growth step of life, which is the archaic term "quickening."

Anyone who has had a miscarriage or an abortion and who believes in God comforts themselves that the baby is in heaven. What exactly is in heaven if the baby did not have its soul from the first cellular growth of life? So obviously the baby receives its soul and its guardian angel from God the moment that it is viable and quickening in the mother's womb. The soul and the guardian angel are each created and unique to the embryo at that first moment. God does not have a "last in first out" or "holding pattern" "inventory" of "new or used" souls.

The Bible is very clear that the body is the temple of the soul. So it's not like any old soul can get stuffed into whatever body comes along for it. That's pagan thinking and it's wrong and destructive, and anti-God and anti-life. When a body is created, a new temple, as an embryo is in truth, a new soul that is suited for that temple is created by God and sent to that body. Period. It is that soul that returns to God for judgment and dispensation when life ends, either pre-born (when obviously no judgment is needed) or at any point in that person's body and life when it comes to an end through death. The temple then is gone but the soul returns to God, who created it for that body temple specifically and exclusively. Thus God knows the soul before the person was born, because he created that soul for the pre-born embryo.

Here's a common sense exercise. Think of a famous saint, let's say John the Baptist. Is it not obvious that God created the soul of the person who would be John the Baptist, and sent the soul to the womb that would carry John the Baptist? I mean, it's not like God just grabbed some soul out of thin air that was hanging around in the waiting room and the soul turns out to have done very well for himself and for the salvation history of the world by becoming John the Baptist. God doesn't say, "Hm, let's grab this soul that's been hanging around and send it down the greased chute to earth and see how he turns out. Wow, look at that, he turned out to be John the Baptist!" God could kind of chuckle to himself and say, "Yee ha! Good thing that soul didn't take a wrong turn and end up in some reindeer herder in Iceland!" Um, obviously not. God creates the soul that will occupy the temple of the body that was just created when an embryo is formed and implanted. Build the temple/create and send the soul. Build the temple/create and send the soul. That's what happens millions of times a year. God can handle it. He's God. He created every uncountable particle in the universe, and all the unmeasurable space in between. God can handle creating a new and individual soul that is perfect for the temple that has just been conceived through the creation of conception.

That's why I am SO SICK of New Age reincarnation idiots. Again, this is not a slam on traditional faiths who believe in reincarnation, such as Buddhists. Their error is understandable because they do not historically believe in an all powerful directive God. Their faith sought to explain a code of conduct and relied on earthly "karma" to reward/punish good people and evil doers. I have no problem with people who are born into this tradition. But I have a real problem with "modern thinkers" who decide all on their own that God is part of a sausage machine where the handle is cranked and souls are recycled. So who would John the Baptist have been in his "past life?" The guy who had the best cave? Someone who "lost his head" in a previous life and therefore needs to "lose his head again in the next life, but this time for a 'good cause'"? Yeah, have another puff on that spiritual cigarette that you smoke.