Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)
2010 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Rusthoven, James J.: Mit jelent embernek lenni a technika korában? Református keresztyén megközelítés.
Rusthoven, James J. an environmentally-friendly therapy. However, other “nanoproducts” are not biodegradable and many are not even detectable by reliable assays. Such products can lead to unpredictable long-term harm to humans and to the environment unless their use can be properly regulated.3 Importance of Understanding What Makes Us Human Other medical technologies are being developed that raise profound ethical issues requiring fundamental knowledge of who we are as human beings. Technologies have been developed to help us survive longer but have challenged our perceptions of ourselves when we are incapacitated or dependent on complex machinery to prevent our heart and lungs from ceasing to function. Such technologies have forced us to ask ourselves: when are we considered truly dead? For those considered alive but severely incapacitated we must ask: is the value of human beings who are rendered incapable of thinking or recognizing others less than the value of those with greater cognitive and relational abilities? Many agonizing hours have been spent in medical intensive care units deciding whether a loved one on a respirator has an irreversible condition that will never allow that person to communicate meaningfully with other human beings. Should those in such persistent vegetative states be allowed to die because of such communicative disabilities? Should such individuals be conveniently left to waste away if they are unable to feed themselves, as in the famous case of Terri Schiavo?4 In short, what does it mean to be fully human? Similar problems arise at the beginning of life. The moral status of zygotes (the cell created by the union of a sperm and egg), of growing and differentiating embryos, and of appendage-sprouting fetuses has been debated for centuries with little consensus within or outside the Church as to what determines moral status. Should certain human developmental forms have greater or lesser status than others? If so, what criteria should be used to determine different levels of humanness and how should such designations govern our decisions about how to treat such life forms? In the following sections, I would like to address this ongoing problem of moral status in human beings through the lens of a covenantal ethic modeled after a biblical notion of covenant. I will use the problem of determining the moral status of the human embryo to illustrate how such an ethic can be helpful in understanding such bioethical concerns. Adult stem cells are less ethically problematic so for purposes of the subject of this paper, they will not be discussed. New Biotechnologies in Stem Cell Research - Embryoids Constructing Stem Cells like Those in the Embryo: Somatic Cell Nuclear Transj,'er I will begin by updating you on recent biological constructs that are being proposed as alternatives to the use of natural human embryos for research purposes in developing new treatments of human diseases. Such treatments might involve 3 Lin, P. (2007) “Nanotechnology Bound: Evaluating the Case for More Regulation,” Nanoethics 1: 105-122. 4 Quill, T. E. (2005) Terri Schiavo: A Tragedy Compounded’, New England Journal of Mediane 352: 1630-1632. 56 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK
