The short of it is that my BF challenged me on an assertion I made...that if Osama bin Ladan were hiding in a children's hospital, I could live with the collateral damage because it serves a 'greater good.' However, he asked me...if stem cell research holds the key to serving a 'greater good' of curing diseases, why am I against it?
I have not been able to come up with a good answer and it's killin' me. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Best Regards.
First of all, embryonic stem cell research shows no promise. So he is asking you to place a higher value on a mythical benefit than human life.
Secondly, what does he think would happen if fetal stem cells were found to be a cure for something? Whole factories would be set up to "manufacture" human embryos for harvesting stem cells. If abortion is wrong, it is wrong, and I would not be in favor of it even if it could stop aging.
I say this in all seriousness: I would willingly die before I would take an innocent life to save my own. I would never willingly accept any treatment that requires killing embryos.
Michael Kinsley and Christopher Reeve are ghouls who have publicly stated they are willing for any number of embryos to die if it will help them.
If you don't mind my jumping in:
The difference is in the intent as well as the action. It is only ethically permissable to kill humans when the ones to be killed are a direct threat - and an immediate threat - to the life of other human beings. Even then, we shouldn't use more force than necessary and we should make every effort to restrict our violence to the one who is a threat.
In the case of Osama, I'm not sure it would be ethical to blow up a building that is known to be a full, occupied children's hospital to kill him. The action of knowingly killing all those children in order to get one man who is technically no threat at that moment and who might be caught by other means and with less danger to others is not something we ever want to condone. Similarly, it is wrong to kill embryos who are no danger to anyone else because someone else might benefit from the products of their deaths.
On the other hand, if the building is believed to be empty except for Bin Ladin, it might be permissable to blow him up, and the building with it, as long as best efforts to protect others were taken. If he were holding the button for a nuclear launch that couldn't be stopped any other way, it would also be permissable to urgently act to blow him up along with the building and its other occupants, in order to save many lives.
I imagine that you believe that Bin Ladin is always an immediate and real threat to many lives as long as he is alive.
When you accept the other's axiom of acceptable collateral damage as utilitarian for number comparisons, you leave the road of ethics and traverse the amoral. I doubt seriously that our leadership would willingly, knowingly bomb a school full of children even if they were watching a CNN feed from the school with Osama addressing the children. But we may not be far from taking such a road, if al Qaeda kills a few more tens-of-thousands of our citizens. War does awaken a certain level of barabity, which is oft the thing that finally obtains victory (Hiroshima, circa 1945).