In most moral systems - including all major religions and We_Issues in Population and Bioethics

Issues in Population and Bioethics

1st EDITION

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

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C O N T E N T S

I. And Then There Were Too Many

II. Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species

III. The Myth of the Right to Life

IV. The Aborted Contract

V. In Our Own Image - The Debate about Cloning

VI. Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos

VII. The Author

VIII. About "After the Rain"

And Then There Were Too Many

By: Sam Vaknin

The latest census in Ukraine revealed an apocalyptic drop of 10% in

its population - from 52.5 million a decade ago to a mere 47.5 million

last year. Demographers predict a precipitous decline of one third in

Russia's impoverished, inebriated, disillusioned, and ageing

citizenry. Births in many countries in the rich, industrialized, West

are below the replacement rate. These bastions of conspicuous

affluence are shriveling.

Scholars and decision-makers - once terrified by the Malthusian

dystopia of a "population bomb" - are more sanguine now. Advances in

agricultural technology eradicated hunger even in teeming places like

India and China. And then there is the old idea of progress: birth

rates tend to decline with higher education levels and growing

incomes. Family planning has had resounding successes in places as

diverse as Thailand, China, and western Africa.

In the near past, fecundity used to compensate for infant mortality.

As the latter declined - so did the former. Children are means of

production in many destitute countries. Hence the inordinately large

families of the past - a form of insurance against the economic

outcomes of the inevitable demise of some of one's off-spring.

Yet, despite these trends, the world's populace is augmented by 80

million people annually. All of them are born to the younger

inhabitants of the more penurious corners of the Earth. There were

only 1 billion people alive in 1804. The number doubled a century

later.

But our last billion - the sixth - required only 12 fertile years. The

entire population of Germany is added every half a decade to both

India and China. Clearly, Mankind's growth is out of control, as

affirmed in the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and

Development.

Dozens of millions of people regularly starve - many of them to death.

In only one corner of the Earth - southern Africa - food aid is the

sole subsistence of entire countries. More than 18 million people in

Zambia, Malawi, and Angola survived on charitable donations in 1992.

More than 10 million expect the same this year, among them the

emaciated denizens of erstwhile food exporter, Zimbabwe.

According to Medecins Sans Frontiere, AIDS kills 3 million people a

year, Tuberculosis another 2 million. Malaria decimates 2 people every

minute. More than 14 million people fall prey to parasitic and

infectious diseases every year - 90% of them in the developing

countries.

Millions emigrate every year in search of a better life. These massive

shifts are facilitated by modern modes of transportation. But, despite

these tectonic relocations - and despite famine, disease, and war, the

classic Malthusian regulatory mechanisms - the depletion of natural

resources - from arable land to water - is undeniable and gargantuan.

Our pressing environmental issues - global warming, water stress,

salinization, desertification, deforestation, pollution, loss of

biological diversity - and our ominous social ills - crime at the

forefront - are traceable to one, politically incorrect, truth:

There are too many of us. We are way too numerous. The population load

is unsustainable. We, the survivors, would be better off if others

were to perish. Should population growth continue unabated - we are

all doomed.

Doomed to what?

Numerous Cassandras and countless Jeremiads have been falsified by

history. With proper governance, scientific research, education,

affordable medicines, effective family planning, and economic growth -

this planet can support even 10-12 billion people. We are not at risk

of physical extinction and never have been.

What is hazarded is not our life - but our quality of life. As any

insurance actuary will attest, we are governed by statistical

datasets.

Consider this single fact:

About 1% of the population suffer from the perniciously debilitating

and all-pervasive mental health disorder, schizophrenia. At the

beginning of the 20th century, there were 16.5 million schizophrenics

- nowadays there are 64 million. Their impact on friends, family, and

colleagues is exponential - and incalculable. This is not a merely

quantitative leap. It is a qualitative phase transition.

Or this:

Large populations lead to the emergence of high density urban centers.

It is inefficient to cultivate ever smaller plots of land. Surplus

manpower moves to centers of industrial production. A second wave of

internal migrants caters to their needs, thus spawning a service

sector. Network effects generate excess capital and a virtuous cycle

of investment, employment, and consumption ensues.

But over-crowding breeds violence (as has been demonstrated in

experiments with mice). The sheer numbers involved serve to magnify

and amplify social anomies, deviate behaviour, and antisocial traits.

In the city, there are more criminals, more perverts, more victims,

more immigrants, and more racists per square mile.

Moreover, only a planned and orderly urbanization is desirable. The

blights that pass for cities in most third world countries are the

outgrowth of neither premeditation nor method. These mega-cities are

infested with non-disposed of waste and prone to natural catastrophes

and epidemics.

No one can vouchsafe for a "critical mass" of humans, a threshold

beyond which the species will implode and vanish.

Luckily, the ebb and flow of human numbers is subject to three

regulatory demographic mechanisms, the combined action of which gives

hope.

The Malthusian Mechanism

Limited resources lead to wars, famine, and diseases and, thus, to a

decrease in human numbers. Mankind has done well to check famine, fend

off disease, and staunch war. But to have done so without a

commensurate policy of population control was irresponsible.

The Assimilative Mechanism

Mankind is not divorced from nature. Humanity is destined to be

impacted by its choices and by the reverberations of its actions.

Damage caused to the environment haunts - in a complex feedback loop -

the perpetrators.

Examples:

Immoderate use of antibiotics leads to the eruption of drug-resistant

strains of pathogens. A myriad types of cancer are caused by human

pollution. Man is the victim of its own destructive excesses.

The Cognitive Mechanism

Humans intentionally limit the propagation of their race through

family planning, abortion, and contraceptives. Genetic engineering

will likely intermesh with these to produce "enhanced" or "designed"

progeny to specifications.

We must stop procreating. Or, else, pray for a reduction in our

numbers.

This could be achieved benignly, for instance by colonizing space, or

the ocean depths - both remote and technologically unfeasible

possibilities.

Yet, the alternative is cataclysmic. Unintended wars, rampant disease,

and lethal famines will ultimately trim our numbers - no matter how

noble our intentions and how diligent our efforts to curb them.

Is this a bad thing?

Not necessarily. To my mind, even a Malthusian resolution is

preferable to the alternative of slow decay, uniform impecuniosity,

and perdition in instalments - an alternative made inexorable by our

collective irresponsibility and denial.

Racing Down

Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

"It is clear that modern medicine has created a serious dilemma ... In

the past, there were many children who never survived - they succumbed

to various diseases ... But in a sense modern medicine has put natural

selection out of commission. Something that has helped one individual

over a serious illness can in the long run contribute to weakening the

resistance of the whole human race to certain diseases. If we pay

absolutely no attention to what is called hereditary hygiene, we could

find ourselves facing a degeneration of the human race. Mankind's

hereditary potential for resisting serious disease will be weakened."

(Jostein Gaarder in "Sophie's World", a bestselling philosophy

textbook for adolescents published in Oslo, Norway, in 1991 and,

afterwards, throughout the world, having been translated to dozens of

languages)

The Nazis regarded the murder of the feeble-minded and the mentally

insane - intended to purify the race and maintain hereditary hygiene -

as a form of euthanasia.

German doctors were enthusiastic proponents of an eugenics movements

rooted in 19th century social Darwinism. Luke Gormally writes, in his

essay "Walton, Davies, and Boyd" (published in "Euthanasia Examined -

Ethical, Clinical, and Legal Perspectives", ed. John Keown, Cambridge

University Press, 1995):

"When the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche

published their tract The Permission to Destroy Life that is Not Worth

Living in 1920 ... their motive was to rid society of the 'human

ballast and enormous economic burden' of care for the mentally ill,

the handicapped, retarded and deformed children, and the incurably

ill. But the reason they invoked to justify the killing of human

beings who fell into these categories was that the lives of such human

beings were 'not worth living', were 'devoid of value'"

It is this association with the hideous Nazi regime that gave eugenics

- a term coined by a relative of Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton,

in 1883 - its bad name. Richard Lynn, of the University of Ulster of

North Ireland, thinks that this recoil resulted in "Dysgenics - the

genetic deterioration of modern (human) population", as the title of

his controversial tome puts it.

The crux of the argument for eugenics is that a host of technological,

cultural, and social developments conspired to give rise to negative

selection of the weakest, least intelligent, sickest, the habitually

criminal, the sexually deviant, the mentally-ill, and the least

adapted.

Contraception is more widely used by the affluent and the

well-educated than by the destitute and dull. Birth control as

practiced in places like China distorted both the sex distribution in

the cities - and increased the weight of the rural population (rural

couples in China are allowed to have two children rather than the

urban one).

Modern medicine and the welfare state collaborate in sustaining alive

individuals - mainly the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, the

sick, and the genetically defective - who would otherwise have been

culled by natural selection to the betterment of the entire species.

Eugenics may be based on a literal understanding of Darwin's metaphor.

The 2002 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say:

"Darwin's description of the process of natural selection as the

survival of the fittest in the struggle for life is a metaphor.

"Struggle" does not necessarily mean contention, strife, or combat;

"survival" does not mean that ravages of death are needed to make the

selection effective; and "fittest" is virtually never a single optimal

genotype but rather an array of genotypes that collectively enhance

population survival rather than extinction. All these considerations

are most apposite to consideration of natural selection in humans.

Decreasing infant and childhood mortality rates do not necessarily

mean that natural selection in the human species no longer operates.

Theoretically, natural selection could be very effective if all the

children born reached maturity.

Two conditions are needed to make this theoretical possibility

realized: first, variation in the number of children per family and,

second, variation correlated with the genetic properties of the

parents. Neither of these conditions is farfetched."

The eugenics debate is only the visible extremity of the Man vs.

Nature conundrum. Have we truly conquered nature and extracted

ourselves from its determinism? Have we graduated from natural to

cultural evolution, from natural to artificial selection, and from

genes to memes?

Does the evolutionary process culminate in a being that transcends its

genetic baggage, that programs and charts its future, and that allows

its weakest and sickest to survive? Supplanting the imperative of the

survival of the fittest with a culturally-sensitive principle may be

the hallmark of a successful evolution, rather than the beginning of

an inexorable decline.

The eugenics movement turns this argument on its head. They accept the

premise that the contribution of natural selection to the makeup of

future human generations is glacial and negligible. But they reject

the conclusion that, having ridden ourselves of its tyranny, we can

now let the weak and sick among us survive and multiply. Rather, they

propose to replace natural selection with eugenics.

But who, by which authority, and according to what guidelines will

administer this man-made culling and decide who is to live and who is

to die, who is to breed and who may not? Why select by intelligence

and not by courtesy or altruism or church-going - or al of them

together? It is here that eugenics fails miserably.

Should the criterion be physical, like in ancient Sparta? Should it be

mental? Should IQ determine one's fate - or social status or wealth?

Different answers yield disparate eugenic programs and target

dissimilar groups in the population.

Aren't eugenic criteria liable to be unduly influenced by fashion and

cultural bias? Can we agree on a universal eugenic agenda in a world

as ethnically and culturally diverse as ours? If we do get it wrong -

and the chances are overwhelming - will we not damage our gene pool

irreparably and, with it, the future of our species?

And even if many will avoid a slippery slope leading from eugenics to

active extermination of "inferior" groups in the general population -

can we guarantee that everyone will? How to prevent eugenics from

being appropriated by an intrusive, authoritarian, or even murderous

state?

Modern eugenicists distance themselves from the crude methods adopted

at the beginning of the last century by 29 countries, including

Germany, The United States, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Venezuela,

Estonia, Argentina, Norway, Denmark, Sweden (until 1976), Brazil,

Italy, Greece, and Spain.

They talk about free contraceptives for low-IQ women, vasectomies or

tubal ligations for criminals, sperm banks with contributions from

high achievers, and incentives for college students to procreate.

Modern genetic engineering and biotechnology are readily applicable to

eugenic projects. Cloning can serve to preserve the genes of the

fittest. Embryo selection and prenatal diagnosis of genetically

diseased embryos can reduce the number of the unfit.

But even these innocuous variants of eugenics fly in the face of

liberalism. Inequality, claim the proponents of hereditary

amelioration, is genetic, not environmental. All men are created

unequal and as much subject to the natural laws of heredity as are

cows and bees. Inferior people give birth to inferior offspring and,

thus, propagate their inferiority.

Even if this were true - which is at best debatable - the question is

whether the inferior specimen of our species possess the inalienable

right to reproduce? If society is to bear the costs of over-population

- social welfare, medical care, daycare centers - then society has the

right to regulate procreation. But does it have the right to act

discriminately in doing so?

Another dilemma is whether we have the moral right - let alone the

necessary knowledge - to interfere with natural as well as social and

demographic trends. Eugenicists counter that contraception and

indiscriminate medicine already do just that. Yet, studies show that

the more affluent and educated a population becomes - the less fecund

it is. Birth rates throughout the world have dropped dramatically

already.

Instead of culling the great unwashed and the unworthy - wouldn't it

be a better idea to educate them (or their off-spring) and provide

them with economic opportunities (euthenics rather than eugenics)?

Human populations seem to self-regulate. A gentle and persistent nudge

in the right direction - of increased affluence and better schooling -

might achieve more than a hundred eugenic programs, voluntary or

compulsory.

That eugenics presents itself not merely as a biological-social

agenda, but as a panacea, ought to arouse suspicion. The typical

eugenics text reads more like a catechism than a reasoned argument.

Previous all-encompassing and omnicompetent plans tended to end

traumatically - especially when they contrasted a human elite with a

dispensable underclass of persons.

Above all, eugenics is about human hubris. To presume to know better

than the lottery of life is haughty. Modern medicine largely obviates

the need for eugenics in that it allows even genetically defective

people to lead pretty normal lives. Of course, Man himself - being

part of Nature - may be regarded as nothing more than an agent of

natural selection. Still, many of the arguments advanced in favor of

eugenics can be turned against it with embarrassing ease.

Consider sick children. True, they are a burden to society and a

probable menace to the gene pool of the species. But they also inhibit

further reproduction in their family by consuming the financial and

mental resources of the parents. Their genes - however flawed -

contribute to genetic diversity. Even a badly mutated phenotype

sometimes yields precious scientific knowledge and an interesting

genotype.

The implicit Weltbild of eugenics is static - but the real world is

dynamic. There is no such thing as a "correct" genetic makeup towards

which we must all strive. A combination of genes may be perfectly

adaptable to one environment - but woefully inadequate in another. It

is therefore prudent to encourage genetic diversity or polymorphism.

The more rapidly the world changes, the greater the value of mutations

of all sorts. One never knows whether today's maladaptation will not

prove to be tomorrow's winner. Ecosystems are invariably comprised of

niches and different genes - even mutated ones - may fit different

niches.

In the 18th century most peppered moths in Britain were silvery gray,

indistinguishable from lichen-covered trunks of silver birches - their

habitat. Darker moths were gobbled up by rapacious birds. Their

mutated genes proved to be lethal. As soot from sprouting factories

blackened these trunks - the very same genes, hitherto fatal, became

an unmitigated blessing. The blacker specimen survived while their

hitherto perfectly adapted fairer brethren perished ("industrial

melanism"). This mode of natural selection is called directional.

Moreover, "bad" genes are often connected to "desirable genes"

(pleitropy). Sickle cell anemia protects certain African tribes

against malaria. This is called "diversifying or disruptive natural

selection". Artificial selection can thus fast deteriorate into

adverse selection due to ignorance.

Modern eugenics relies on statistics. It is no longer concerned with

causes - but with phenomena and the likely effects of intervention. If

the adverse traits of off-spring and parents are strongly correlated -

then preventing parents with certain undesirable qualities from

multiplying will surely reduce the incidence of said dispositions in

the general population. Yet, correlation does not necessarily imply

causation. The manipulation of one parameter of the correlation does

not inevitably alter it - or the incidence of the outcome.

Eugenicists often hark back to wisdom garnered by generations of

breeders and farmers. But the unequivocal lesson of thousands of years

of artificial selection is that cross-breeding (hybridization) - even

of two lines of inferior genetic stock - yields valuable genotypes.

Inter-marriage between races, groups in the population, ethnic groups,

and clans is thus bound to improve the species' chances of survival

more than any eugenic scheme.

The Myth of the Right to Life

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

I. The Right to Life

Generations of malleable Israeli children are brought up on the story

of the misnamed Jewish settlement Tel-Hai ("Mount of Life"), Israel's

Alamo. There, among the picturesque valleys of the Galilee, a

one-armed hero named Joseph Trumpeldor is said to have died, eight

decades ago, from an Arab stray bullet, mumbling: "It is good to die

for our country." Judaism is dubbed "A Teaching of Life" - but it

would seem that the sanctity of life can and does take a back seat to

some overriding values.

The right to life - at least of human beings - is a rarely questioned

fundamental moral principle. In Western cultures, it is assumed to be

inalienable and indivisible (i.e., monolithic). Yet, it is neither.

Even if we accept the axiomatic - and therefore arbitrary - source of

this right, we are still faced with intractable dilemmas. All said,

the right to life may be nothing more than a cultural construct,

dependent on social mores, historical contexts, and exegetic systems.

Rights - whether moral or legal - impose obligations or duties on

third parties towards the right-holder. One has a right AGAINST other

people and thus can prescribe to them certain obligatory behaviors and

proscribe certain acts or omissions. Rights and duties are two sides

of the same Janus-like ethical coin.

This duality confuses people. They often erroneously identify rights

with their attendant duties or obligations, with the morally decent,

or even with the morally permissible. One's rights inform other people

how they MUST behave towards one - not how they SHOULD or OUGHT to act

morally. Moral behavior is not dependent on the existence of a right.

Obligations are.

To complicate matters further, many apparently simple and

straightforward rights are amalgams of more basic moral or legal

principles. To treat such rights as unities is to mistreat them.

Take the right to life. It is a compendium of no less than eight

distinct rights: the right to be brought to life, the right to be

born, the right to have one's life maintained, the right not to be

killed, the right to have one's life saved, the right to save one's

life (wrongly reduced to the right to self-defense), the right to

terminate one's life, and the right to have one's life terminated.

None of these rights is self-evident, or unambiguous, or universal, or

immutable, or automatically applicable. It is safe to say, therefore,

that these rights are not primary as hitherto believed - but

derivative.

The Right to be Brought to Life

In most moral systems - including all major religions and Western

legal methodologies - it is life that gives rise to rights. The dead

have rights only because of the existence of the living. Where there

is no life - there are no rights. Stones have no rights (though many

animists would find this statement abhorrent).

Hence the vitriolic debate about cloning which involves denuding an

unfertilized egg of its nucleus. Is there life in an egg or a sperm

cell?

That something exists, does not necessarily imply that it harbors

life. Sand exists and it is inanimate. But what about things that

exist and have the potential to develop life? No one disputes the

existence of eggs and sperms - or their capacity to grow alive.

Is the potential to be alive a legitimate source of rights? Does the

egg have any rights, or, at the very least, the right to be brought to

life (the right to become or to be) and thus to acquire rights? The

much trumpeted right to acquire life pertains to an entity which

exists but is not alive - an egg. It is, therefore, an unprecedented

kind of right. Had such a right existed, it would have implied an

obligation or duty to give life to the unborn and the not yet

conceived.

Clearly, life manifests, at the earliest, when an egg and a sperm

unite at the moment of fertilization. Life is not a potential - it is

a process triggered by an event. An unfertilized egg is neither a

process - nor an event. It does not even possess the potential to

become alive unless and until it is fertilized.

The potential to become alive is not the ontological equivalent of

actually being alive. A potential life cannot give rise to rights and

obligations. The transition from potential to being is not trivial,

nor is it automatic, or inevitable, or independent of context. Atoms

of various elements have the potential to become an egg (or, for that

matter, a human being) - yet no one would claim that they ARE an egg

(or a human being), or that they should be treated as such (i.e., with

the same rights and obligations).

The Right to be Born

While the right to be brought to life deals with potentials - the

right to be born deals with actualities. When one or two adults

voluntarily cause an egg to be fertilized by a sperm cell with the

explicit intent and purpose of creating another life - the right to be

born crystallizes. The voluntary and premeditated action of said

adults amounts to a contract with the embryo - or rather, with society

which stands in for the embryo.

Henceforth, the embryo acquires the entire panoply of human rights:

the right to be born, to be fed, sheltered, to be emotionally

nurtured, to get an education, and so on.

But what if the fertilization was either involuntary (rape) or

unintentional ("accidental" pregnancy)?

Is the embryo's successful acquisition of rights dependent upon the

nature of the conception? We deny criminals their loot as "fruits of

the poisoned tree". Why not deny an embryo his life if it is the

outcome of a crime?

The conventional response - that the embryo did not commit the crime

or conspire in it - is inadequate. We would deny the poisoned fruits

of crime to innocent bystanders as well. Would we allow a passerby to

freely spend cash thrown out of an escape vehicle following a robbery?

Even if we agree that the embryo has a right to be kept alive - this

right cannot be held against his violated mother. It cannot oblige her

to harbor this patently unwanted embryo. If it could survive outside

the womb, this would have solved the moral dilemma. But it is dubious

- to say the least - that it has a right to go on using the mother's

body, or resources, or to burden her in any way in order to sustain

its own life.

The Right to Have One's Life Maintained

This leads to a more general quandary. To what extent can one use

other people's bodies, their property, their time, their resources and

to deprive them of pleasure, comfort, material possessions, income, or

any other thing - in order to maintain one's life?

Even if it were possible in reality, it is indefensible to maintain

that I have a right to sustain, improve, or prolong my life at

another's expense. I cannot demand - though I can morally expect -

even a trivial and minimal sacrifice from another in order to prolong

my life. I have no right to do so.

Of course, the existence of an implicit, let alone explicit, contract

between myself and another party would change the picture. The right

to demand sacrifices commensurate with the provisions of the contract

would then crystallize and create corresponding duties and

obligations.

No embryo has a right to sustain its life, maintain, or prolong it at

its mother's expense. This is true regardless of how insignificant the

sacrifice required of her is.

Yet, by knowingly and intentionally conceiving the embryo, the mother

can be said to have signed a contract with it. The contract causes the

right of the embryo to demand such sacrifices from his mother to

crystallize. It also creates corresponding duties and obligations of

the mother towards her embryo.

We often find ourselves in a situation where we do not have a given

right against other individuals - but we do possess this very same

right against society. Society owes us what no constituent-individual

does.

Thus, we all have a right to sustain our lives, maintain, prolong, or

even improve them at society's expense - no matter how major and

significant the resources required. Public hospitals, state pension

schemes, and police forces may be needed in order to fulfill society's

obligations to prolong, maintain, and improve our lives - but fulfill

them it must.

Still, each one of us can sign a contract with society - implicitly or

explicitly - and abrogate this right. One can volunteer to join the

army. Such an act constitutes a contract in which the individual

assumes the duty or obligation to give up his or her life.

The Right not to be Killed

It is commonly agreed that every person has the right not to be killed

unjustly. Admittedly, what is just and what is unjust is determined by

an ethical calculus or a social contract - both constantly in flux.

Still, even if we assume an Archimedean immutable point of moral

reference - does A's right not to be killed mean that third parties

are to refrain from enforcing the rights of other people against A?

What if the only way to right wrongs committed by A against others -

was to kill A? The moral obligation to right wrongs is about restoring

the rights of the wronged.

If the continued existence of A is predicated on the repeated and

continuous violation of the rights of others - and these other people

object to it - then A must be killed if that is the only way to right

the wrong and re-assert the rights of A's victims.

The Right to have One's Life Saved

There is no such right because there is no moral obligation or duty to

save a life. That people believe otherwise demonstrates the muddle

between the morally commendable, desirable, and decent ("ought",

"should") and the morally obligatory, the result of other people's

rights ("must"). In some countries, the obligation to save a life is

codified in the law of the land. But legal rights and obligations do

not always correspond to moral rights and obligations, or give rise to

them.

The Right to Save One's Own Life

One has a right to save one's life by exercising self-defense or

otherwise, by taking certain actions or by avoiding them. Judaism - as

well as other religious, moral, and legal systems - accept that one

has the right to kill a pursuer who knowingly and intentionally is

bent on taking one's life. Hunting down Osama bin-Laden in the wilds

of Afghanistan is, therefore, morally acceptable (though not morally

mandatory).

But does one have the right to kill an innocent person who unknowingly

and unintentionally threatens to take one's life? An embryo sometimes

threatens the life of the mother. Does she have a right to take its

life? What about an unwitting carrier of the Ebola virus - do we have

a right to terminate her life? For that matter, do we have a right to

terminate her life even if there is nothing she could have done about

it had she known about her condition?

The Right to Terminate One's Life

There are many ways to terminate one's life: self sacrifice, avoidable

martyrdom, engaging in life risking activities, refusal to prolong

one's life through medical treatment, euthanasia, overdosing and self

inflicted death that is the result of coercion. Like suicide, in all

these - bar the last - a foreknowledge of the risk of death is present

coupled with its acceptance. Does one have a right to take one's life?

The answer is: it depends. Certain cultures and societies encourage

suicide. Both Japanese kamikaze and Jewish martyrs were extolled for

their suicidal actions. Certain professions are knowingly

life-threatening - soldiers, firemen, policemen. Certain industries -

like the manufacture of armaments, cigarettes, and alcohol - boost

overall mortality rates.

In general, suicide is commended when it serves social ends, enhances

the cohesion of the group, upholds its values, multiplies its wealth,

or defends it from external and internal threats. Social structures

and human collectives - empires, countries, firms, bands, institutions

- often commit suicide. This is considered to be a healthy process.

Thus, suicide came to be perceived as a social act. The flip-side of

this perception is that life is communal property. Society has

appropriated the right to foster suicide or to prevent it. It condemns

individual suicidal entrepreneurship. Suicide, according to Thomas

Aquinas, is unnatural. It harms the community and violates God's

property rights.

In Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the owner of all souls. The soul

is on deposit with us. The very right to use it, for however short a

period, is a divine gift. Suicide, therefore, amounts to an abuse of

God's possession. Blackstone, the venerable codifier of British Law,

concurred. The state, according to him, has a right to prevent and to

punish suicide and attempted suicide. Suicide is self-murder, he

wrote, and, therefore, a grave felony. In certain paternalistic

countries, this still is the case.

The Right to Have One's Life Terminated

The right to have one's life terminated at will (euthanasia), is

subject to social, ethical, and legal strictures. In some countries -

such as the Netherlands - it is legal (and socially acceptable) to

have one's life terminated with the help of third parties given a

sufficient deterioration in the quality of life and given the

imminence of death. One has to be of sound mind and will one's death

knowingly, intentionally, repeatedly, and forcefully.

II. Issues in the Calculus of Rights

The Hierarchy of Rights

The right to life supersedes - in Western moral and legal systems -

all other rights. It overrules the right to one's body, to comfort, to

the avoidance of pain, or to ownership of property. Given such lack of

equivocation, the amount of dilemmas and controversies surrounding the

right to life is, therefore, surprising.

When there is a clash between equally potent rights - for instance,

the conflicting rights to life of two people - we can decide among

them randomly (by flipping a coin, or casting dice). Alternatively, we

can add and subtract rights in a somewhat macabre arithmetic.

Thus, if the continued life of an embryo or a fetus threatens the

mother's life - that is, assuming, controversially, that both of them

have an equal right to life - we can decide to kill the fetus. By

adding to the mother's right to life her right to her own body we

outweigh the fetus' right to life.

The Difference between Killing and Letting Die

Counterintuitively, there is a moral gulf between killing (taking a

life) and letting die (not saving a life). The right not to be killed

is undisputed. There is no right to have one's own life saved. Where

there is a right - and only where there is one - there is an

obligation. Thus, while there is an obligation not to kill - there is

no obligation to save a life.

Killing the Innocent

The life of a Victim (V) is sometimes threatened by the continued

existence of an innocent person (IP), a person who cannot be held

guilty of V's ultimate death even though he caused it. IP is not

guilty of dispatching V because he hasn't intended to kill V, nor was

he aware that V will die due to his actions or continued existence.

Again, it boils down to ghastly arithmetic. We definitely should kill

IP to prevent V's death if IP is going to die anyway - and shortly.

The remaining life of V, if saved, should exceed the remaining life of

IP, if not killed. If these conditions are not met, the rights of IP

and V should be weighted and calculated to yield a decision (See

"Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life" by Baruch A. Brody).

Utilitarianism - a form of crass moral calculus - calls for the

maximization of utility (life, happiness, pleasure). The lives,

happiness, or pleasure of the many outweigh the life, happiness, or

pleasure of the few. If by killing IP we save the lives of two or more

people and there is no other way to save their lives - it is morally

permissible.

But surely V has right to self defense, regardless of any moral

calculus of rights? Not so. Taking another's life to save one's own is

rarely justified, though such behavior cannot be condemned. Here we

have the flip side of the confusion we opened with: understandable and

perhaps inevitable behavior (self defense) is mistaken for a moral

right.

If I were V, I would kill IP unhesitatingly. Moreover, I would have

the understanding and sympathy of everyone. But this does not mean

that I had a right to kill IP.

Which brings us to September 11.

Collateral Damage

What should prevail: the imperative to spare the lives of innocent

civilians - or the need to safeguard the lives of fighter pilots?

Precision bombing puts such pilots at great risk. Avoiding this risk

usually results in civilian casualties ("collateral damage").

This moral dilemma is often "solved" by applying - explicitly or

implicitly - the principle of "over-riding affiliation". We find the

two facets of this principle in Jewish sacred texts: "One is close to

oneself" and "Your city's poor denizens come first (with regards to

charity)".

Some moral obligations are universal - thou shalt not kill. They are

related to one's position as a human being. Other moral values and

obligations arise from one's affiliations. Yet, there is a hierarchy

of moral values and obligations. The ones related to one's position as

a human being are, actually, the weakest.

They are overruled by moral values and obligations related to one's

affiliations. The imperative "thou shalt not kill (another human

being)" is easily over-ruled by the moral obligation to kill for one's

country. The imperative "thou shalt not steal" is superseded by one's

moral obligation to spy for one's nation.

This leads to another startling conclusion:

There is no such thing as a self-consistent moral system. Moral values

and obligations often contradict each other and almost always conflict

with universal moral values and obligations.

In the examples above, killing (for one's country) and stealing (for

one's nation) are moral obligations. Yet, they contradict the

universal moral value of the sanctity of life and the universal moral

obligation not to kill. Far from being a fundamental and immutable

principle - the right to life, it would seem, is merely a convenient

implement in the hands of society.

The Aborted Contract And the Right to Life

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

The issue of abortion is emotionally loaded and this often makes for

poor, not thoroughly thought out arguments. The questions: "Is

abortion immoral" and "Is abortion a murder" are often confused. The

pregnancy (and the resulting fetus) are discussed in terms normally

reserved to natural catastrophes (force majeure). At times, the embryo

is compared to cancer, a thief, or an invader: after all, they are

both growths, clusters of cells. The difference, of course, is that no

one contracts cancer willingly (except, to some extent, smokers --but,

then they gamble, not contract).

When a woman engages in voluntary sex, does not use contraceptives and

gets pregnant - one can say that she signed a contract with her

fetus. A contract entails the demonstrated existence of a reasonably

(and reasonable) free will. If the fulfillment of the obligations in a

contract between individuals could be life-threatening - it is fair

and safe to assume that no rational free will was involved. No

reasonable person would sign or enter such a contract with another

person (though most people would sign such contracts with society).

Judith Jarvis Thomson argued convincingly ("A Defence of Abortion")

that pregnancies that are the result of forced sex (rape being a

special case) or which are life threatening should or could, morally,

be terminated. Using the transactional language: the contract was not

entered to willingly or reasonably and, therefore, is null and

void. Any actions which are intended to terminate it and to annul its

consequences should be legally and morally permissible.

The same goes for a contract which was entered into against the

express will of one of the parties and despite all the reasonable

measures that the unwilling party adopted to prevent it. If a mother

uses contraceptives in a manner intended to prevent pregnancy, it is

as good as saying: " I do not want to sign this contract, I am doing

my reasonable best not to sign it, if it is signed - it is contrary to

my express will". There is little legal (or moral) doubt that such a

contract should be voided.

Much more serious problems arise when we study the other party to

these implicit agreements: the embryo. To start with, it lacks

consciousness (in the sense that is needed for signing an enforceable

and valid contract). Can a contract be valid even if one of the

"signatories" lacks this sine qua non trait? In the absence of

consciousness, there is little point in talking about free will (or

rights which depend on sentience). So, is the contract not a contract

at all? Does it not reflect the intentions of the parties?

The answer is in the negative. The contract between a mother and her

fetus is derived from the larger Social Contract. Society - through

its apparatuses - stands for the embryo the same way that it

represents minors, the mentally retarded, and the insane. Society

steps in - and has the recognized right and moral obligation to do so

- whenever the powers of the parties to a contract (implicit or

explicit) are not balanced. It protects small citizens from big

monopolies, the physically weak from the thug, the tiny opposition

from the mighty administration, the barely surviving radio station

from the claws of the devouring state mechanism. It also has the right

and obligation to intervene, intercede and represent the unconscious:

this is why euthanasia is absolutely forbidden without the consent of

the dying person. There is not much difference between the embryo and

the comatose.

A typical contract states the rights of the parties. It assumes the

existence of parties which are "moral personhoods" or "morally

significant persons" - in other words, persons who are holders of

rights and can demand from us to respect these rights. Contracts

explicitly elaborate some of these rights and leaves others

unmentioned because of the presumed existence of the Social

Contract. The typical contract assumes that there is a social contract

which applies to the parties to the contract and which is universally

known and, therefore, implicitly incorporated in every contract. Thus,

an explicit contract can deal with the property rights of a certain

person, while neglecting to mention that person's rights to life, to

free speech, to the enjoyment the fruits of his lawful property and,

in general to a happy life.

There is little debate that the Mother is a morally significant person

and that she is a rights-holder. All born humans are and, more so, all

adults above a certain age. But what about the unborn fetus?

One approach is that the embryo has no rights until certain conditions

are met and only upon their fulfillment is he transformed into a

morally significant person ("moral agent"). Opinions differ as to what

are the conditions. Rationality, or a morally meaningful and valued

life are some of the oft cited criteria. The fallaciousness of this

argument is easy to demonstrate: children are irrational - is this a

licence to commit infanticide?

A second approach says that a person has the right to life because it

desires it.

But then what about chronic depressives who wish to die - do we have

the right to terminate their miserable lives? The good part of life

(and, therefore, the differential and meaningful test) is in the

experience itself - not in the desire to experience.

Another variant says that a person has the right to life because once

his life is terminated - his experiences cease. So, how should we

judge the right to life of someone who constantly endures bad

experiences (and, as a result, harbors a death wish)? Should he better

be "terminated"?

Having reviewed the above arguments and counter-arguments, Don Marquis

goes on (in "Why Abortion is Immoral", 1989) to offer a sharper and

more comprehensive criterion: terminating a life is morally wrong

because a person has a future filled with value and meaning, similar

to ours.

But the whole debate is unnecessary. There is no conflict between the

rights of the mother and those of her fetus because there is never a

conflict between parties to an agreement. By signing an agreement, the

mother gave up some of her rights and limited the others. This is

normal practice in contracts: they represent compromises, the

optimization (and not the maximization) of the parties' rights and

wishes. The rights of the fetus are an inseparable part of the

contract which the mother signed voluntarily and reasonably. They are

derived from the mother's behaviour. Getting willingly pregnant (or

assuming the risk of getting pregnant by not using contraceptives

reasonably) - is the behaviour which validates and ratifies a contract

between her and the fetus. Many contracts are by behaviour, rather

than by a signed piece of paper. Numerous contracts are verbal or

behavioural. These contracts, though implicit, are as binding as any

of their written, more explicit, brethren. Legally (and morally) the

situation is crystal clear: the mother signed some of her rights away

in this contract. Even if she regrets it - she cannot claim her rights

back by annulling the contract unilaterally. No contract can be

annulled this way - the consent of both parties is required. Many

times we realize that we have entered a bad contract, but there is

nothing much that we can do about it. These are the rules of the game.

Thus the two remaining questions: (a) can this specific contract

(pregnancy) be annulled and, if so (b) in which circumstances - can be

easily settled using modern contract law. Yes, a contract can be

annulled and voided if signed under duress, involuntarily, by

incompetent persons (e.g., the insane), or if one of the parties made

a reasonable and full scale attempt to prevent its signature, thus

expressing its clear will not to sign the contract. It is also

terminated or voided if it would be unreasonable to expect one of the

parties to see it through. Rape, contraception failure, life

threatening situations are all such cases.