Old World News: The Greatest Happiness?

Abstract

While Europe celebrated the millennium last year, the reason for there being one was largely forgotten. That it might be was evident years earlier, when the British government decided that its commemoration of 2000 years since the birth of Christ would be a dome with no relevance to Christianity. It is tempting to wonder whether the Millennium Dome might have been less of a disastrously expensive white elephant if it had indeed celebrated Christ and his legacy. Just as important to the future direction of some European societies has been the further derogation, in the millennial year, from the Judaeo-Christian principles that underlie, at whatever depth, legislation and public morality. In their place, utilitarian arguments have gained much ground, yet are often used crudely and ineptly. The most recent example is the debate surrounding regulations passed by the U.K. House of Commons that permit virtually unlimited research on human embryos. Research on human embryos had been legally limited to studying the causes and treatment of infertility and of congenital disorders. Now, however, research licenses may be granted to increase knowledge about the development of embryos, or about serious disease, and to enable such knowledge to be applied in developing treatments for serious diseases. The pressure for such a change came from a research community which wishes to be unfettered in its development and use of stem cells. The propaganda used was quite shameless: Mike Dexter, director of the United Kingdom's largest medical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, claimed that six million Britons (over 10 percent of the population) would benefit from stem cell research. Others talked of cures for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, spinal cord injury, and cancer, within five years. Yet however outrageous the claims, government ministers and Members of Parliament alike believed them. It was frequently said that MPs should not deny the populace such enormous benefits. What they ignored was the similar hype over gene therapy just a decade earlier--a decade which saw not a single cure as a result of gene therapy. The claims of enormous potential benefits were not examined critically, nor were there questions about the costs of applying the research if it is successful. Many MPs did not even consider the status of an embryo created for research purposes, or if they did, they dismissed it as a ball of cells. The idea that it was worthy of special protection as a potential human being was largely ignored, as was the belief of some that the embryo already has full human rights. The wider risks to societal beliefs about the value of human life, if one devalues the embryo, were hardly considered. …