Two Understandings
of Harm
Kahn suggests that we examine our average
understandings of humane and inhumane treatment or harm. In creating a dilemma
– which I consider to be a false one – Kahn proposes that we examine what would
be the worse thing to do when considering the life of a fetus that lacks its
higher brain functions vs. the lives the adult human beings who would benefit
from the procedures she has suggested and would suffer if the procedures were
not enacted when she says, “The question we have to ask is, which is more
inhuman- creating a brain-absent clone for the purpose of harvesting spare
parts, or purposely refraining from using the technology when it becomes
available, allowing the individual to suffer and die instead?” (P. 17). Her answer
is fairly simple: it’s more inhuman to allow the adult human to suffer and die
than to manipulate the human being’s development early on so that it cannot
develop into a sentient being.
There are a couple of flaws with her reasoning.
First, it is not clear that not using the technology – which could heal adult
humans – would actively worsen their quality of lives. Kahn seems to
think that not giving someone what would benefit him or her is actively worsening
his or her situation. This does not seem obviously true. For example, if I am a
poor man who only has $5 and you have $20, then one could say you are rich
compared to me since you have more money than I do. Now if I needed $10 to buy
myself a meal and you had the money but just refused to give it to me, you have
withheld what I needed but you haven't positively worsened my situation. It
would be another matter if I took the $5 you had and used it for my own
purposes. Refraining from giving help to someone or actively doing something
to them are two different kinds of actions.
Let me give another example. Suppose I’m not
legally or morally obligated to rescue a drowning man anywhere and spot a man
drowning in a pool. Instead of rescuing the man, I decide to move on and not
help him. He drowns and while I am a bastard for not rescuing him, I haven’t
violated my moral duties since rescuing a drowning man – accordingly – is not
morally or legally obligatory. But suppose I were to shove the drowning man
underwater and would not let him resurface, have I done something different?
Absolutely. I may not have an obligation to rescue someone from a bad situation
but I don’t have the right to actively worsen his or her situation from my own
will. Kahn seems to be thinking that if we don’t use the technology to benefit
these adult human beings then we are morally wrong for doing so. I would agree
– barring her grisly means of doing it – with her desire to alleviate suffering
for adult human beings but her argument as it stands does not seem to support
it.
Another problem with Kahn’s argument is that
human beings in virtue of what they are can be harmed and deprived of a
future they're entitled to just as much as - if not more than - human
beings who are more capable of accessing his or her future. Kahn seems
to say that you and I are entitled to a future because of a certain function
or ability we have that is connected to having a future: sentience,
self-awareness, consciousness, desires, interests, and so forth. You don't have
to be able to access your future directly or indirectly in order to be
entitled to that future. A 5-year-old boy is entitled to attend college at 18
years old despite the fact he cannot access that scenario from his own stage of
development. As he develops and matures over time, he gets closer to
accessing that future. And by the way, in the absence of having a human nature
that intrinsically grounds certain potential functions and properties, there
will be no potential (intrinsic or extrinsic) for acquiring a certain
quality of life. Hence in not permitting the human being to develop into a more
fully developed human being, Kahn is both not allowing the unborn human being’s
intrinsic capacity and direct access for a future to commence. In the absence
of having the intrinsic capacity for a future – capacity one has by virtue of
the nature it has -, no direct access for a future is possible.
And this all holds even if we assume for the sake of argument that the human
embryo is not a person until much later in its development.
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