Commentary

Scientists Begin Human Experiments

Reports surfaced this week that a team of biologists in China have been conducting gene modification experiments on tiny humans. They are attempting to re-engineer the human race with an eye toward eradicating disease, aging and other maladies.

Numerous scientists, journalists and ethicists have raised a ruckus over the implications of a science in which the basic fabric of human identity could be permanently manipulated by people with an agenda or vision of a new world order. They are, of course, correct to do so. After all, what is being done by Professor Junjiu Huang, could potentially alter the human race by creating genetic traits which can become hereditary and, therefore, part of the general gene pool.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see what might go wrong with such a mad scientific endeavor.

What few are discussing, however, is the fact that Huang and his Chinese team are conducting these experiments upon human embryos.

He claims that these tiny humans are “non viable” – but that stretches credibility. If these embryos are alive, then they are already “viable” and fully human. And we know from the news reports that the tiny babies are very much alive.

So not only is the research objective inherently dangerous, the project is deeply flawed from a moral perspective because it requires experimentation upon human beings – who are then destroyed after Huang collects his data. There once was a consensus within the medical and scientific community that human experimentation – particularly experimentation without the consent of the subjects – was inherently evil; that consensus derived from the exposure of programs in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during WWII. Scientists like Huang would once have faced criminal prosecution for such abuse of human beings.

But we live in a world of great moral confusion. The pursuit of legalized abortion has produced an environment in which the civilized world no longer takes for granted the supreme dignity of the human person.