The wager

“Yes, but you have to wager,” said Blaise Pascal in response to agnosticism. In the end, death intervenes, and not deciding on God’s existence is ultimately tantamount to choosing against Him. Choose for belief, and at best you gain salvation; choose against, and at best you gain nothing at all. Of course, if the probability of God’s existence is precisely zero, then all bets are off, but you’d have to be rather myopic to make that claim, which you cannot prove. No, when all is said and done, you have to wager.

The same goes for the current debate on embryonic stem cell research. A wild jump, you say, to go from discussing Pascal’s wager on belief to public policy? Not so, because at the core of our endless arguments on stem cells is a dilemma which requires a wager and has no definitive materialist answer. Is the human embryo a human life? If we were simply studying the embryo, observing its development, awestruck at the formation of a human being from one cell, then yes, contrary to Pascal’s conclusion about God, you could abstain from a wager. No action has been committed against the embryo; it is allowed to develop naturally.

But, we aren’t merely observing; we are destroying. Once that decisive step has been taken, then we must wager. Either that destruction is blameless, or it is murder. There is no question as to the embryo’s innocence; the best argument for abortion, the violinist argument, falls apart since we’re not destroying an embryo because it’s infringing upon the mother’s rights. The intentional killing of an innocent life is murder; therefore, unless my reasoning is terribly mistaken, the creation of stem cells by disaggregating a human embryo’s cells is one of two things: if a human being, then murder, if not, then no big deal.

But how do you decide between those two options? You cannot turn to science. Any embryology textbook shows what a seamless process embryonic development is from the moment of fertilization until birth. Unless impeded by faults determined by the interplay between its own genetics and the environment provided by its mother’s womb (otherwise known as miscarriage), it will be born 40 weeks or so after it was but a single cell. Markers such as the heart beginning to beat, or the first neuron firing, or development of a recognizably human face, are mere symbols devoid of any real meaning. Since at this moment, it would be terribly difficult to select an embryo that could not develop into a human being and would be intrinsically miscarried, then use its cells, we still must wager.

Science cannot tell you whether a human embryo is a human being at the stage in which it would be dismembered to create stem cells. If anything, the evidence points firmly toward its humanity. But, we deeply want to cure crippling, deadly diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinsonism. We would do almost anything if we could make the lame walk. However, if we were told tomorrow that the cure to Alzheimer’s disease was present within the brains of a family with a newly discovered genetic variant, but we would have to kill them to get it, we would all recoil in horror. Why do we not flinch at the production of stem cells? I suppose it’s because a “blob of cells” simply doesn’t look human. In the end, though, looks aren’t everything, and you have to wager. You cannot claim ignorance; what you may be supporting has the possibility of being murder. Is it worth the lebensraum?