Over at the Mirror of Justice, Greg Vischer righly criticizes the New York Times invoking the authority of science to make the editorial claim that a human embryo is a "mere cluster of cells." I wrote him on this and he kindly posted my E-mail there. Out of loyalty to the Ethics and Culture Forum, I thought perhaps I should post them here as well, with a few minor changes.

One ought to criticize the NYT editorial on cloning, and the claim
that scientists consider these "microscopic entities" "mere clusters of cells
in a petri dish." It is worth noting that there are philosophers and scientists
out there who would say the same thing of you and me. But "mere cluster of
cells" is not a scientific judgment, even if uttered by a scientist, no more so
than if a scientist were to look at a painting, Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande
Jatte" for example, and utter the claim "that is a mere cluster of pigments."
We call people like that ignorant, however much specialized training they may
have in some field. While the painting consists of pigments, it has a certain unity as a work of art that is not captured by the simplistic claim that it is a "mere cluster of pigments." What we want to know is why it is in fact more than just
"a mere cluster of pigments," an inquiry that pursues its reality as a social object. But being a social reality is not a kind of unreality. Paintings are no less real than dollar bills, chairs, buildings, marriages, and petri dishes.

With regard to living things, the reality of which is natural, not social, it stretches the bounds of credulity to imagine praticing scientists doing their jobs in their labs walking around talking about the "mere clusters of cells in my petri dish." In fact, I do not believe many at all would say this. Look at their practice. The mere fact that these "clusters of cells" are in their petri dishes at all presupposes they are not "mere clusters of cells." If they were mere clusters of cells, why are they in their petri dish? Why are they so interested in this "mere cluster of cells" and not some other one? Why as a part of good scientific practice do they attempt to use sterile petri dishes in their studies, the sterility of which requires that they eliminate any "mere clusters of cells" from the environment of the petri dish? No. They know that they are studying no "mere cluster of cells," but a certain kind of cluster of cells exhibiting a biological unity ordered toward a certain kind of physical development. The reality of that biological unity is not determined socially like the painting, but proceeds according to biological principles of life intrinsic to it. In their actual scientific practice, they want to know why it is in fact more than just a "mere cluster of cells." One will learn nothing specific about the cloning of human beings by studying a "mere cluster of cells" that happens to be a labrador embryo, and even less from a "mere cluster of
cells" that has no biological unity to it. Indeed, that is why it is even silly
to refer to this supposed "mere cluster of cells" as "potential life." It is
identifiably a certain kind of life undergoing biological processes of life
distinctive of the kind of being it is in the stage of development it is in. If
it were not such an identifiable kind of life, the scientist would not be
studying it. If it is but a "mere cluster of cells" how does the biologist even manage to identify it as a human embryo?

If someone who happens to be a biologist says that what he is studying is a
"mere cluster of cells," he is not speaking or acting as a biologist when he
does so. No biologist studies "mere clusters of cells." He is speaking and
acting politically. And the history of our culture tells us that when someone
starts saying that a living human being is "a mere X" we should watch our wallets, and even more so our backs.

John
ndethics@nd.edu