Bio-ethical Challenges of the 21st Century
Interview with Dr. Bernard Nathanson
Following is the transcript of an episode of Fr. Frank Pavone's EWTN series,
Defending Life, for the year 2000.
Click here for more on Dr. Nathanson.
Hello this is Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life. One of
our good friends at Priests for Life is Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who many of you
know as the man who assisted to, in his own words, "uncage the abortion monster"
in the United States. In the 60's he and his colleagues plotted and schemed how
they might liberalize the abortion laws in our country, which at one time,
protected unborn children throughout pregnancy. Well, Dr. Nathanson and his
friends were successful. They were founding the National Association for the
Repeal of Abortion Laws which later was renamed the National Abortion and
Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL). He was one of the founding directors
and he became the director of the largest abortion facility in the western
world, in New York City. Dr. Nathanson even aborted one of his own children as
he relates in his very powerful book, "The Hand of God." In fact he's the author
of several books which give important insight into how the abortion movement got
started and into the deceit that he and his friends used to launch that
movement.
One of the most important things that Dr. Nathanson witnesses to today, now
that he is a pro-life advocate, completely converted to the life position and
rejecting abortion all together, is the fact that he claims the Church was
asleep when he and his friends were plotting and scheming how to open the doors
to abortion. He says he stole the abortion issue from the Church. In fact
he has said to clergy that he and his friends would have never gotten away with
what they did if the clergy had been united, purposeful and strong. Well today,
Dr. Nathanson is trying to see to it that the Church is not caught asleep again
when it comes to the bio-technological challenges of the 21st Century -- and
some pretty incredible things are on the horizon and in fact are here already.
I recently sat down with Dr. Nathanson to review what some of these things
are and the first thing I asked him was about the role of the clergy and the
importance of the clergy in turning back the tide on abortion and how he stole
the abortion issue from the Church. Let's listen to what he had to say.
Dr. Nathanson:
The clergy is not aware that there are revolutionary scientific advances
going on. I'm not sure they're advances, but they're changes certainly, which
have the potential to change our lives beyond my imagination and yours and I'm
speaking now of genetic engineering and enhancement genetics, behavioral
genetics, the human genome mapping, euthanasia, organ transplants, artificial
intelligence and finally the tinkering with the aging process which has the
potential to allow each of us to live a thousand years or forever.
Fr. Frank:
Another issue of critical importance is that of the human genome and as we've
been hearing in the news, the characteristics of the human genome have been
mapped so that we can determine what genes control which characteristics. What
does this mean for medical ethics and bio-ethics? Dr. Nathanson also commented
on that question.
Dr. Nathanson:
The human genome project was launched in 1990 with a 3 billion dollar funding
from the American government, federal government. And basically the design of
the project was to be able to pinpoint, identify every single one of our genes
on all the 46 chromosomes in each cell of our body. There are probably somewhere
between 80 and 100 thousand genes on these 46 chromosomes. Now, the project is
almost finished ahead of schedule. It was scheduled for 15 years and so it would
finish in the year 2005, but because of very significant revolutionary advances
in what is called "gene sequencing", certain people such as Craig Venter, have
leaped ahead on this project and they are claiming that by the end of the year
2000, they will be finished with the human genome map. In other words, if the
physician or the scientist takes a drop of your blood or even a cell from inside
your mouth he can run it through a computer and get a complete mapping of all
the genes in your body and can tell you with reasonable certainty what your
future is and not only in terms of health but in terms of behavior, in terms of
your private life, social life and so on.
The biggest question surrounding this kind of technology is, who shall get
the information? Should the government have it, should you have it, should your
parents have it or your children? Should your fiancée have it? Or all of this?
The issue of confidentiality is so central to this project that it is the
subject of a great deal of debate in all of the bio-ethical journals now being
published.
Then to go on to the other areas which you expressed some interest in…we have
what is called "enhancement genetics" and I think people are aware that there
were newspapers reports within the last two weeks of what are called "smart
mice." These are mice whom the geneticists have tinkered with and altered their
genes. They have identified the gene or genes for memory and presumably
intelligence and they have enhanced them, blown them up or added genes to them
and these mice are really super mice now. They have acquired a great deal more
measurable intelligence than the average strain of mouse. Well, of course this
technology can easily be applied to human beings. So, what we are looking at in
that particular area is the creation, if you will, of a super class, a class of
philosopher-kings like Plato spoke of but also the reverse, the mirror side of
that is, a class of individuals, whose genes have been reduced…intelligence
genes…and they will become the menial brutes of our society made to do all the
tasks which no one wants to do and of course they will have muscle genes
incorporated within them.
Fr. Frank:
Another way in which our modern society has tried to play God is by playing
around with the process of human reproduction. Instead of consenting to God's
original plan for the natural procreation of human beings in an act of intimate
love between a man and a woman in marriage, we've taken it upon ourselves to
create all kinds of artificial methods of reproduction. What are the ethical
challenges and the dilemmas involved in this? Dr. Nathanson will tell us in this
next segment.
Dr. Nathanson:
The problem in assisted reproductive technology, is that it is turning upside
down all of our relationships to each other. For example, there is egg donation
and sperm donation then surrogate mothers and embryo transplants and frozen
embryos. The absurdity of this comes up in a case in California in which a trial
judge had an eight-year-old girl appear before him. A couple who wanted a baby
(the woman could not carry a child and the man had weak sperm) commissioned the
assisted reproductive technologist to mix somebody else's sperm, the sperm
donor, with somebody else's egg. They paid for it. They created an embryo, the
embryo was put in the womb of a surrogate mother and she delivered the baby nine
months later. Then the question arose as to who were the parents and just about
the time the question arose the original couple who paid for all this filed for
divorce. So the question became was the original couple the parents of this
child or was the sperm donor and his wife the parent or the egg donor and her
husband the parent or the surrogate mother and her husband the parent? The judge
concluded there were eight parents literally, biologically but the child had no
parents and was placed in a foster home. I mean the permutations and
combinations of this kind of technology are staggering.
Fr. Frank:
One of the other areas that Dr. Nathanson has been spending a lot of time
researching and speaking about, is the aging process and he has some incredible
things to tell us about how we're trying to get control of that.
Dr. Nathanson:
The aging process has been the subject of a great deal of study and genetic
experimentation. It has been determined that at the end of every chromosome, the
very end, their is a structure know as a telomere, which is a little spindly
structure and every time the cell divides, it divides between 50 and 100 times
during our lifetime…every cell, that telomere shortens and eventually it becomes
so short that it disappears and at that point it is thought that that is what
controls the aging process, the disappearance of the telomere. Now the
scientists, the geneticists have discovered a gene which switches on an enzyme
known as telemorase, which in turn keeps the telomere from shortening. When you
do that, you can prolong life indefinitely. I'm not talking about 120 years or
200 years, I'm talking about 5000 years or actual, literal immortality. So if
you think we have a problem with term limits in the Congress now, just wait and
see…
Fr. Frank:
My brothers and sisters I think you're beginning to see from Dr. Nathanson's
comments, that the challenges to human life and dignity in this new century are
not only about the taking of life but literally the restructuring of life and in
this regard he spoke to us about the prospect of actually making new species,
taking human organs and artificial intelligence and combining it with robotics
to create scenarios that we haven't even begun to imagine. Let's listen to what
Dr. Nathanson has to say.
Dr. Nathanson:
Well, we're talking really Huxleyan imagery in a way but the truth of the
matter is it's here. It's not just Huxleyan pipe dreams and what you are talking
about now is really the bridge between today and the indefinite future. What I
mean is that organ transplant today is a hot issue. Who shall get the kidney?
Shall we have sale of organs our shall we have only donation? Who shall get the
heart? How are the priorities arranged? There are a great many ethical questions
surrounding this technology, but the truth is, that this technology will be
quickly supplanted and completely eradicated by artificial organs that
technology will provide, that we will have implantable artificial and
indestructible hearts and kidneys and so on which will do all the work of our
own kidneys or hearts and that is really the future in that area.
But you bring up artificial intelligence and Kurzweil just wrote a book on
that in which he predicted that in the year 2039, we will have computers which
are 1000 times faster than the human mind. Those computers will be able to
think, they will be able to have moods or emotions, they will do everything the
human brain can do and a thousand times better. So again it's a question of, who
will be, what will these people be, who will these computers be? Will they be
people? Will they think for us? Will we be kept as house pets or something of
that sort, because we will clearly be subservient and inferior to these
incredibly efficient organs and organ systems which are computers. The new
computers, by the way, are DNA computers. They are the fastest computers there
are and that's what the future is. But the bottom line on this is, what is our
destiny as human beings? Are we to be in some way supplanted by another species
with artificial intelligence and artificial organs and no need for a complex
body such as we have now and a lot of the organs which we have, being
unnecessary? I mean it will change our thinking about ourselves, about each
other, about our relationship to society, to the nation and to God.
Fr. Frank:
The Church's message in the midst of all of this confusing technology has
always been the dignity of the human person. And I asked Dr. Nathanson what his
research about that beautiful word "dignity" has revealed.
Dr. Nathanson:
Well, dignity is something which I spent a great deal of time on since I
wrote my dissertation in bio-ethics on it. But, basically it's very simple and
it's not a complex issue at all. Dignity resides in what is called "Imago Dei."
I mean, I've explored all the other sources of dignity and in general people
confuse the appearance of dignity with dignity itself. Dignity is intrinsic
within the human being. It is given to us by God. It is untouchable. You cannot
have your dignity taken away or enhanced or reduced. The appearance of
dignity...yes, or respect for dignity...yes, those things are changeable, but
the dignity itself is not.
Fr. Frank:
My dear friends, you and I in the Church in the 21st Century are called to
respond the these new challenges and I asked Dr. Nathanson what he thought were
some of the most important elements in the Church's response and here's what he
told us.
Dr. Nathanson:
Well, clearly the first and most important priority is education. If the
priest, the clergy are adequately educated to these issues, they will then
become alerted to them. The sleep will be broken as it were and they will come
out in front as leaders of the community in terms of trying to supply the very
difficult answers to these complex questions. But the first thing that the
clergy must do is educate itself to these matters such as, genetic manipulation
and engineering, assisted reproductive technology, euthanasia, aging…all of
these things. They are complex issues but they are manageable. In ordinary
terms. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a physician to understand
most, if not all, of the genetics involved. It's pretty simple and I myself, I'm
a physician, of course, I hated genetics in college but I never the less applied
myself to the point where I think I am reasonably comfortable in that area. But
you don't have to be a physician to do that. You can be a priest or a lawyer,
and many lawyers are very competent in this area, or accountant or anything
else. But the main thing is education and intense education at that.
Fr. Frank:
As you know the Priests for Life organization is meant to fully activate and
encourage the Church to proclaim the dignity of life so I asked finally that Dr.
Nathanson share his thoughts with us about the mission and role of Priests for
Life.
Dr. Nathanson:
Well, you know Priests for Life is an extraordinarily fine group. I don't say
that in order to make anybody feel better or flatter anyone. It's an unusual and
a very unique group in that most of the priests whom I have encountered across
this country and indeed around the world, shy away from the subject of abortion.
They somehow want to keep it under the rug and only pull it out when they're
ordered to. In my own experience as a Catholic convert for the last several
years, I've attended a great many Masses and listened to a great many homilies
and I believe in three years I've listed to only one homily on the subject of
abortion and that was here in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Other than that, priests
seem not to want to talk about it and Priests for Life is the Paul Revere of
this whole gestault. That Priests for Life are riding around trying to galvanize
the rest of the clergy into getting engaged in what is one of the most appalling
revolutions of the 20th Century and I am enormously grateful to them
and I admire their work enormously. But unfortunately, I believe that there are
not enough, that Priests for Life should have a staff twenty times what it has
now.
Fr. Frank:
I am very, very grateful to Dr. Bernard Nathanson for the courage that he has
shown over these years as he has embraced the pro-life position and repented of
his former sins and as he has embraced the Roman Catholic faith, which he did
under the guidance of John Cardinal O'Connor, who baptized him. Brothers and
sisters, as he said, we need to be informed about the bio-ethical challenges in
this new century, this new millennium, but we also have to be greatly
encouraged. Some of these things that Dr. Nathanson has said are very scary. But
when it comes right down to it our mission remains the same in this challenging
century as it has been from the very first century of the Church. And we find
the mission given us in the Word of God, "God made man in his own image, in the
Divine likeness He created us, male and female He created us." Each one of us is
a reflection of Almighty God and no matter what challenges arise to reconfigure
or to destroy or to distort that image of God, we must stand up and with courage
and clarity, say that the human being is unique in all creation. And there's
nothing wrong with knowing about how we function but we also have to reverence
who we are and realize that our lives are indeed in the hands of God. May you,
may all of us be faithful in our mission of defending Life.
