Naming life: science versus culture

“The power to “name” life here (de Certeau 1984) can be seen as the power to define what life means, who respects it, and who violates it.” (Faulkner p. 228)

This quote from the  “Regulating cell lives in Japan,” acts in my opinion, as a concise and well-worded summary for many of the bioethical debates that surround stem-cell research, as well as issues about contraception and abortion, which are also particularly salient at this time. While this article touched on several different aspects of the debate of bioethics, I thought this moment epitomized a theme of this course.

“The power to “name” life,” comes out of the knowledge and technology that is available to create, aid, and extend life. Artificial insemination or in-vitro insemination can create life, thus calling a fertilized embryo sitting in a dish to be so labeled.  Ventilators can put breath into a dying, or even mentally dead person, to prolong their technical and biological death, thus giving them this same label of being alive, of “life”.

However, the apex of this argument comes to light in the fact that this label of life, as science and technology give it, conflicts with the parallel definitions and labels that cultures, religions, and individuals would apply. Though observation and lab work indicate there is cell growth and proliferation in the now fertilized ovum in the petri dish, many people would not call that life. Even when this same embryo is within a human female, many people mark a distinct and much later point as life’s beginning. What complicates things more is that these opinions, further conflict with other cultural, and more notably religious opinions, some of which maintain life begins upon fertilization.

This is exactly the classic debate on abortion – how do you determine who “respects it, and who violates it,” when there is no agreement on when “it” begins?

Stem-cell research is still a relatively young technology, so although many cultural groups have claimed their stance on it, it has yet to reach a level of discourse analogous to that of abortion. However, the movie “Gattaca,” though perhaps a hyperbole of what society might be like in times with more power to manipulate stem-cells and determine our offspring, suggests to us an idea of what these advancing technologies may bring us. The movie’s undercurrent of corruption and discrimination (again though hyperbolic) suggests the multitude of issues that will continue to arise as culture conflicts with the rapidly advancing scientific technology.