AMERICAN BIOETHICS ADVISORY COMMISSION
The burgeoning field of what is called "bioethics" presents a problem: How do bioethicists come to their conclusions? The media often give the impression that if a group of bioethicists bless something, it must be morally acceptable. From what do they derive their authority?
The American Bioethics Advisory Commission (ABAC) was formed in 1997, shortly after President Clinton constituted his own bioethics commission. "It was formed originally as a kind of shadow group to the national bioethics commission," said Dr. C. Ward Kischer, chairman of ABAC. "I am a scientist, a human embryologist. I am not a bioethicist. My mission from the ABAC from the very beginning was to keep the science straight."
Keeping the science straight is something those who engage in bioethics have failed to do, said Kischer. For example, one member of the current President’s Council on Bioethics "questioned whether ‘embryo’ referred to an early human life," said Kischer. "He questioned whether it was human or living. . . . Virtually every human embryologist declares that the life of a new human being begins at fertilization or conception. Fertilization and conception are the same thing."
Some people say that pregnancy begins at implantation. "The textbooks of human embryology have been in the libraries for 100 years or more," said Kischer. "None of them state that pregnancy begins at implantation. Pregnancy begins at conception."
The lack of solid science goes deeper and broader. "Abortion, partial-birth abortion, in-vitro fertilization, human fetal research, human embryo research, cloning and stem cell research are all core issues of human embryology," he wrote in the Fall 2002 issue of The ABAC Quarterly. "Yet, in all of the Supreme Court cases since 1973 and at all of the congressional hearings on these issues, no human embryologist has been called as a witness and no reference to human embryology has ever been made. Further, among the NIH Human Embryo Research Advisory Panel, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, no human embryologist was appointed as a member, nor called as a witness."
Asked to describe the first principles that underlie ABAC’s approach to bioethics, ABAC’s Executive Director, the Rev. Fr. Joseph Howard, said, "The principles and the works of Aristotle and St. Thomas. . . . We base ourselves on classical Aristotelian principles."
Howard said that many people’s acceptance of the obvious evil of abortion is very simple. "Most young people want all the sex they can get, all the sex they want, with no consequences," he said. "That demands that abortion be available on demand."
He says he has argued with many people who admit this. "I hear confessions. . . . They’ll tell you that," he said. "This is how they live and how they want to live."
Members of ABAC, which is a project of the American Life League, lecture, debate, and publish, arguing against the new ideologies in bioethics. The commission includes Dr. Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution; former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson; and Prof. Charles Rice of the University of Notre Dame Law School.
Howard said that radical theorist and Princeton Prof. Peter Singer, who openly advocates infanticide among other anti-life positions, "is having great influence. He is redefining the moral vocabulary. He is doing what all the moderns are doing, redefining the classical Aristotelian moral vocabulary." Summarizing his philosophy quite well, Singer’s latest book is called Unsanctifying Human Life.
Said Howard, "He is educating some of the best minds in bioethics."
Kischer said that some of the current expectations about science are overblown. "I personally do not believe that we are on the threshold of producing a human by human cloning," he said, dismissing the claims of an Italian scientist. As for the capacity of embryonic stem cells-which are obtained by killing embryos-to cure people of various diseases, "In the scientific literature, I have not read anywhere in the world, anyone claim a therapeutic, clinical benefit derived from human embryonic stem cells. The real potential is adult stem cells," which can be obtained without killing anybody.
Something that is being done, said Kischer, is the insertion of animal genes into human embryos a la The Island of Dr. Moreau. "That’s been done," though many who work on this question do not publish their experiments, he said. Asked if a baby has been born with such genes, he replied, "I don’t know. It’s possible."
ABAC may be reached at ALL, P.O. Box 1350, Stafford, Va. 22555 (540-659-4171; website: www.all.org/abac).
