Andy Lampkin Rejects Lethal Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Not if it involves the destruction of the embryo," Andy Lampkin responded when asked if he thought Loma Linda University should do stem cell research.

This question came up following his presentation on February 26 titled "Beyond Mystery: Toward Untangling the Moral Controversy Surrounding the Moral Status of Embryonic Human Life and Stem Cell Research." This was the seventh meeting in the "2008 Jack W. Provonsha Lecture Series" at LLU.

The series is presented by the Center for Christian Bioethics. Mark Carr is the Director and Dawn Gordon is the Manager. It is possible to visit the Center at www.llu.edu/llu/bioethics.

Lampkin teaches in the LLU School of Religion where he is also conducting on a major grant a study of why certain groups are especially wary of medical research. He received his doctorate in ethics at Vanderbilt University.

He developed his case in three steps. He reviewed the more or less secular arguments for emphasizing the continuity between human embryos and adults. He also reviewed similar arguments for emphasizing their discontinity. In the end he cast his vote in favor of the first of these because of the specific ethical concerns of the Christian community of faith. These estabish great moral status to human embryoinc and adult life, he contended.

Lampkin developed this line of thought by appealing to the Christian beliefs that God created human life in the divine image and that God's incarnation in vulnerable human life exhibits its great value. He cited pasagaes in Scripture from Genesis, Psalms, Job, Ecclesiasties and Jeremiah. He appealed to a passage in II Maccabees as well.

When asked in the question and answer period if when they are in mortal conflict he favors the life of the pregnant woman or the embryo, he chose the first. Despite how he had sometimes earlier expressed himself, this shows that Lampkin does not believe that the embryo and the woman possess equal moral status.

Although Lampkin did not say this, there are only a few circumstances in which it might be possible to save the life of the embryo but not the pregnant woman's. In the overriding majority of such cases the choice is between letting them both die, on the one hand, or saving the woman, on the other. Saving the embryo but not the pregnant woman is not usually a true option.

He reminded the audience that we rarely divide humans into this group and that in order treat them both better. We usually exploit one group for the apparent sake of the other and this is ethically unacceptable.

After the meeting concluded, Lampkin and a scientist on campus continued a friendly debate about whether an infant born with anencephaly is genuinely "human." They went back and forth with the scientist saying "no" and Lamkin the theologian and ethicist saying "yes," a reversal of what one might expect. "It will never know anything about its environemnt," the scientist asserted. "But if it isn't human life, what is it?" Lampkin inquired.

As frequently happens in such conversations, Lampkin and the local scientist were using the term "human" in different ways. For Lampkin its meaning was biological: a baby born with anencephaly is certainly a member of our species. The scientist was using the term functionally. It was not and never would be able consciously to interact with its environment.

Posted by: davidrlarson | 02 March 2008 at 7:28