There may be no containing science. This week researchers at Melbourne's Monash University made a splash with the announcement that had created embryos of mice by fertilising an egg from body cells without need of sperm. The possibilities for human reproduction, bypassing the traditional male contribution, were immediately - and distressingly - apparent.
Then yesterday we read that human embryos have been created and destroyed in American laboratories, in the search for new medical remedies. Today, in Weekend Review and World, we carry a report on the debate in the United States prompted by that stem cell research.
There may be no containing science, but nor can humanity be ignored. There is a voice in all of us that cries, "stop, wait, there is something elementally important to consider here." It is not necessary to be religious, in the sense of belief in a higher being, to hear the voice of human value. Nor is it necessary to invest nature with the sacramental inviolability with which environmentalists tend to regard it.
The voice is a caution, saying there may be reasons in nature we do not yet understand and that when we tamper with the physics and chemistry of our own reproduction, we could the victims of our hubris.
For humanity it is never a one-sided issue. There are compelling human benefits in artificial reproduction for couples who cannot otherwise have children. And stem cell research raises hopes for the sufferers of incurable diseases such as Parkinsons and Alzheimer's. And abortion, still the most sensitive of all challenges to life, can be justified on the grounds of humanity in many circumstances.
It is hard to imagine how in vitro fertilisation services could avoid creating more embryos in a petri dish than it can possible implant. Is it better to discard them than to harvest them for stem cell research? It is a question that goes right to the top of Government in the United States. President Bush has soon to decide whether to allow federal funding of research on stem cells taken from human embryos. President Clinton before him decided that federal money could be used for the research but not to extract the cells from the embryo.
While that has brought American research to a halt in public laboratories, privately funded institutions have proceeded to the point that they now admit they are creating human embryos purely for stem cell experiments. The dilemma is causing some of the firmest "pro-life" adherents to re-examine the essentials of what it is to be human.
A frozen embryo stored in a clinic, says a prominent opponent of abortion, just isn't the same as a foetus developing in a mother's womb. Human life, perhaps, is sanctified by beginning in human love, and being surrounded by it, not by the mere fusion of cells.
No, that will not do. No matter what its beginnings or surroundings, an embryo that becomes a child has all the rights and respect of a human being.
Perhaps there is a way out of the dilemma by honouring the human benefits served by research that kills embryonic life. But the implications of that principle would not bear examination either. In the end, perhaps all we can do is shudder, and keep on shuddering as the boffins poke and prod at the most primal elements of our species. And hope that they are shuddering, too.
There is too much promise of good in most of this research to stop it even if we could. Like genetic engineering in general, it is a case of watching, warning and keeping a sense of awe of natural selection and the mysteries of life. Not only might that be scientifically sound, it may keep us human.
<i>Editorial:</i> A quiet voice that keeps us human
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