Christians called to preserve human identity amid scientific advancements

Greater consideration must be given to ethics and God as science and technology stride into ever more uncharted territory and society moves further away from a Christian understanding of human identity, says one of Europe’s leading neonatologists.

In a talk sponsored by CARE last night, Professor John Wyatt painted a picture of a world in which the once unthinkable is perhaps just around the corner, as scientists work on things like ‘cures’ for ageing, drugs to suppress unpleasant memories, and all kinds of ‘human enhancement’.

While the huge scientific advances of the last century and particularly the last few decades have prompted some to declare man the new gods, Professor Wyatt warned that the “potential for evil is obvious” as ethical lines are blurred and technology opens up new possibilities for the manipulation of the body and mind.

Among the trends unnerving the University College London professor are the selective killing of female foetuses and infants in parts of the world, and ‘reproductive tourism’, by which wealthy Westerners use women in developing countries as surrogate mothers – a practice he described as “rent a womb”.

“Whenever you hear people talking about control of nature just beware of it turning out to be the strong abusing the weak,” he said.

He pointed to the ongoing debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide as a reflection of the changing way in which people are viewing the human body.

He argued that as the human body is increasingly valued as a machine, rather than a sacred creation of God, euthanasia is being increasingly embraced as the answer to a “body that is a failed machine”.

“When this was being debated 15 years ago, the arguments were about pain and diseases like cancer. Now the arguments are not about pain but about control and autonomy,” he said.

“[It is] machine thinking coupled with the centrality of autonomy.”

Professor Wyatt said that a Christian response to the “startling and confusing possibilities” offered by medical research had to start with an understanding of the moral order infused in creation by the creator God.

“We need to look for creation order and we especially need to look for the moral order because God has not just created atoms - a physical reality - but God has created a moral order that penetrates through every aspect of reality.

“It is that hidden moral order which we need to identify because if we live our lives according to the order of creation then our lives will flourish, but if we live our lives across the moral order our lives will fail as we follow the way of folly.”

Professor Wyatt maintained that it was impossible for people to find meaning or understanding of the human design “from a genetic code”, and that many scientists are approaching the development of new technology from the wrong perspective.

Whilst the frailty of the human condition frustrates some, Professor Wyatt proffered that this was “not an unfortunate side effect” but part of God’s design.

Rather than being undignified, he said that human beings had been created by God to be dependent on one another and that the need to be fed, cared for or “have your bottom wiped in no way effects your unique, irreducible dignity as somebody made in God’s image”.

“True human freedom is not freedom from the fundamental order of the universe. It is freedom within that universe,” he said.

“We mustn’t be embarrassed about the paradoxes of our faith because it is precisely a Christian understanding of the paradoxes in the human condition that have the greatest relevance in our secular, materialist society.”

Professor Wyatt went on to say that Christians need to challenge “materialistic, impoverished and reductionist conceptions” of humanity and reveal their “hidden link” to contemporary social problems.

Christians also need to defend the distinctiveness of humans from animals and machines, and to enter into dialogue with scientists to encourage the development of technology for therapeutic ends whilst resisting the “manipulative and destructive possibilities that technology holds”.

“The threat to human identity from biomedical technology is less obvious and more subtle than that which comes from obvious threats like terrorism or totalitarianism or global warming but I believe it is more dangerous because it strikes at the heart of what it means to be human.

“With the façade of doing good, it is much more dangerous.”