The Ethics of Life<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> By Robert Buckman

 

Ethics is the process of trying to identify the things that we should do from the wide range of things that we can do. The problem is that human societies have always shown a great readiness to do the things that they can do – and want to do – if they think that they can get away with it. The recent spate of legal cases against certain barons of industry in the US, for example, has shown that the problem with ethics is rarely ignorance of the principles. Most of the people brought to book concerning alleged wrongdoing knew perfectly well what they were doing, but preferred to ignore the ethical and legal restraints, clearly hoping that they would not be called to account. So in areas where the ethical boundaries have been clearly drawn and legally reinforced and strengthened, the main problem, it appears, is that the urge is strong and the conscience weak. However, when it comes to new areas, including bioethics, we haven’t even reached that stage yet. Where there are ethical issues to do with living matter – our biosphere, our biotechnology, our biological science and exploration – the ethical limits are still being drawn, and are currently hotly debated and contested. We are, as the saying goes, venturing into new territory and it is extremely important that we use the right instruments to guide us. For that reason it is worth spending a few moments considering the origins of ethical codes before going on to examine the areas where we need them most.

 

Ethics by Divine Revelation or Secular Thought?

Over the course of human history, the most commonly used codes of ethics on this planet have been derived from religions – and therein lies a serious problem.

 

Divine revelation is not open to debate or discussion. In general, belief systems that are centred on a supernatural god or gods certainly can provide many benefits for their adherents. Religions are good at giving comfort and reassuring answers for perplexing and threatening phenomena – particularly death (and even more particularly when death appears to be random or arbitrary), adversity, hardship, suffering and so on. Religions also provide codes of behaviour that, if obeyed fully, so it is claimed, would guide believers into a harmonious and peaceful existence. The problem with divine revelation as a source of ethics is that it has never been possible for all humans to agree on what precisely it is that the divine forces are revealing.

 

Human history is littered with large numbers of religious conflicts in which divine intentions as revealed to one community are regarded as calumny by another community. Sometimes the conflict has been between followers of a different god or gods; quite often it has been over different ways of worshipping or obeying the same god. At all events, it has become clear over the centuries that divine revelation has frequently become a short cut to conflict and war for human societies – which is why, when it comes to devising new ethical codes in unexplored territory, we need to use secular ethics. By ‘secular’ I mean no more than ‘relying on no supernatural belief ’ – and I use the word in the same way that it is most often used about the United Nations: a system that recognizes all religions but does not endorse any one religion above the others.

 

Ethics and the Endpoints of Human Life

Obviously a secular system of ethics is vital in international politics – but it is also important in bioethics. For example, we have all been involved in many centuries of debate about precisely when a human life can be said to begin, and this debate underlies the serious divisions over abortion. If you happen to believe that divine forces breathe life into the foetus right at the moment when the sperm meets the egg (or even that eggs and sperm by virtue of their potential for life are sacred in themselves) then you will always view any abortion as tantamount to murder. The current debates in many countries over abortion often boil down to basic issues over interpretations of divine will, making them, in many situations, almost unresolvable. Similarly, if you believe that the moment of death is solely a matter for God to decide, then you will never accept the idea of euthanasia. In many debates over this issue, people – including some health care professionals – who oppose the option of euthanasia do so on grounds that, when explored, turn out to be rooted in religious belief. Opponents of euthanasia commonly hold the position that a predominantly secular society such as Holland that accepts the use of euthanasia is not only godless but also, by definition, immoral and unethical. As I have seen in my own experience, the right of a dying person to refuse attempts at cardiac resuscitation is a similar issue. Those who oppose the right of a person to determine – to some extent – the moment and manner of their own death, sometimes reveal their belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with humans usurping or interfering with the divine plan – which is where, in their view, discussions stops and cannot proceed further.

 

By the same token, if you believe that the mysteries of life itself are so sacrosanct that by definition they must remain undisturbed and impenetrable, then you will close the door on stem cell research. In all these areas, the claims of divine revelation close the door firmly and irrevocably to discussion and examination. (It is worth remembering that a few centuries ago, carrying out a post-mortem examination was regarded as illegal and an act of desecration. Had that view held sway we would never have learned anything about the structure and function of the human body or the myriad ways in which it goes wrong. We owe a great deal to the courageous pioneers – from Vesalius on – who braved condemnations and potential excommunication to study the once forbidden territory.) A basic problem with a supernatural belief is not that it is right or wrong – but that it is unarguable. That, in itself, is problem enough. To make matters worse, divine revelation is often used to fashion behaviours that unite communities and frequently represents aesthetic values rather than ethical ones. Nowhere are these questions more important than in bioethics – the ways in which human foetal tissues are used or disposed of, the issues surrounding a dying person, male circumcision, and many other bioethical issues are often highly coloured by aesthetic considerations and matters of custom and tradition which obscure any underlying ethical issues.

 

Traffic Lights for Dangerous Crossroads

It is often said that ethical codes are comparable to traffic lights – they prevent accidents (mostly!) not by magic or divine power, but because we all recognize their intended meaning and agree to obey the rules behind them or face the consequences. A red traffic light signifies ‘stop’ not because red is somehow a magical or preordained symbol (although there may be a biological factor at work here in that the sight of blood may have an innate or inborn power to alert animals to danger) but because we all agree that ‘red means stop and green means go’. Ethics – and bioethics particularly – can be thought of as serving the same function.

 

At this juncture in our development, when many mysteries are becoming accessible and intelligible, we need to be as calm and logical as possible over which activities are permissible and which are not. The muddier the waters, the greater our need for clarity and what Viktor Frankl called ‘thinking through’. The curious and precarious process that we call civilization has always advanced – however intermittently – by a strong recognition that we need to re-examine constantly the things that we can do and think through, with a wide vision of human problems and approaches to their resolution, what we should do. That is why bioethics really matters, and why we need more debate in this area, not less.

 

Dr Robert Buckman is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics. A medical oncologist at the University to Toronto, Dr Buckman is the author of Can We Be Good Without God? (Prometheus Books).