Editorials: Father & son
monkey tails, then, is ethical agnosticism in the face of scientific advance. The most obvious ethical dilemmas are presented in moving from animal to human genetic experimentation. What risks...
...If the law is clear, as it seems to be, and if the INS has interpreted it correctly, as it seems to have done, what purpose is served in waiting for a federal judge to rule so...
...Why not...
...Do we know nothing about the power of nature to strike back...
...Furthermore, it is the law, not only civil law but natural law as well...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service has made the right decision, and yet does not carry it out...
...As time passes, who can doubt that the situation will become ever more painful for the boy, for his family in Cuba as well as his family in Miami...
...Who wilt really say no to the market...
...Presumably this meets his ethical obligation...
...His mother died trying to bring him to the United States...
...But are there "treatments" before physicians and their scientific colleagues work to develop them through animal experiments...
...What risks will it pose...
...Have we not learned that ethical questions are real questions...
...And then, of course, millions even billions of dollars are being invested in these projects...
...Commonweal 6 January 28, 2000...
...Institutional review boards in hospitals and research institutes seem ready to approve potentially effective treatments (especially for fatal conditions), leaving the risk questions to the future...
...Once the technical barriers are breached, how can the risks to humans be fully known without actually transplanting cloned organs...
...If the process of selection and adaptation takes eons, how can we foresee the consequences of even the simplest alteration in our genetic make-up, or that of the jellyfish and rhesus monkey...
...Who will stop them...
...If we learn nothing from the story of Adam and Eve, can we learn something from the development of the atomic bomb or the overuse of antibiotic medicines...
...And are there markets before physicians themselves offer treatments...
...In the face of uncertainty, who can give informed consent...
...Extortion-like protests in the streets of Miami and demagoguery in the corridors of Congress should have no bearing on the final outcome of this decision...
...Happy children grow up everywhere---even in Cuba...
...Perhaps, at first, health insurance companies will say "no...
...In a nation of immigrants, her death naturally has a deep resonance...
...The U.S...
...predictably, they will be beaten back by "compassionate" legislation...
...What is all of this doing to creation...
...They require real reflection and real answers...
...The same physician also claims that he would not recommend to his patients every advance in technology, "just because there is a market for it...
...Even now, one physician who does direct insertion of a human sperm into an egg acknowledges that extraneous material may enter the egg--although no infants born as a result of this technique have yet shown a tendency to unusual diseases or conditions...
...Fully consenting to the risks, sick and dying people will acquiesce in the hope of renewed health and life...
...Yes, there is medical progress to be made in genetic research, but real progress also requires us to say: Stop and think...
...Gene replacement therapy promises to cure our ills...
...But it shows no disregard for her sacrifice, nor any naivet6 about the political life of Fidel Castro's Cuba, to say that a boy who has lost his mother is best reunited with his father...
...Down the road, cloning human organs in monkeys or pigs will present the same round of ethical handwringing...
...What could be more obvious or compassionate...
...Yes, it presents risks...
...Who can know before the actual experiments take place...
...We are all original sinners, as Sidney Callahan reminds us on page 7, but do we know nothing about hubris or heedlessness...
...Another physician, who describes himself as "an ethical religious man," says he will include the new information in counseling patients, but "they can decide whether they want to go forward or not...
...Does that mean nothing is amiss...
...For if natural selection is part of the marvelously adaptive nature of all life on earth (see, John Haught's "Evolution and the Humility of God" on page 12), who are scientists to decide that some genes should be enhanced or modified, while others are disabled...
...FATHER & SON Send Elian Gonzalez home to his father in Cuba...
...But children given modified genes at conception may be born and raised, perhaps reaching adulthood, before the full effects of any alteration or treatment can be known...
...The case of Eli~in Gonz~lez is a tragedy...
...Is this any way to approach ethical decision making in matters of novel and risky experiments that will affect not just individuals, but the whole human community and the animal and plant world that sustains us...
...Attorney General Janet Reno, having disallowed the decision of a Florida state judge to grant a custody hearing to Elian's great-uncle, allows him to petition a federal court...
Vol. 127 • January 2000 • No. 2
