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Redefining Health to Achieve Secularist Utopia – Part 1

on March 13, 2015

The national preoccupation with health care occasioned by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has focused on how to find the best care for the nation’s medical needs. Yet the shift in emphasis from medical care (curing illness) to health care (maintaining good health) conceals a more profound confrontation between a traditional valuing of human life in Christianity and the secularist attempt to re-engineer human nature by redefining the meaning of health. Dr. Christopher Hook of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic reviewed these disturbing trends, which are becoming increasingly apparent in the commitments of the leadership of medical associations and institutions, in two lectures at the annual conference of the L’Abri Fellowship in Rochester Minnesota on February 13 and 14.

In “the Scandal of Bioethics,” Hook discussed the project of bioethics, begun in earnest in the early twentieth century, and continuing with renewed intensity today by the leadership of medical associations and medical institutions. Its objective is to reengineer human nature and the conditions of human life using a concept of “health,” as defined by this elite and medical science and technology. Bioethics is essentially an Enlightenment project, replacing the classical medical ethics, rooted in the Christian tradition and the Hippocratic Oath, which aims to heal patients while doing them no harm. The “dominant bioethics” today, Dr. Hook said, is “contrary to the Judeo-Christian and Hippocratic thought.” This bioethics is a scandal in the sense of the Greek term “scandalon” (from which the English word scandal is derived) which means “a snare or cause of moral stumbling.” The “end result” of this dominant bioethics is “the commodification, devaluing, and destruction of the bearers of God’s image.”

Traditional medical ethics began in ancient Greece with Hippocrates. He endeavored to make the medical profession a trusted profession by a medical ethic that aimed exclusively on the good of the patient, and was not influenced by other interests. Avoidance of harm to the patient, and respect for life, were key points in the ethic, which were embodied in the Hippocratic Oath. Christians continued this ethic because it agreed well with the Christian doctrine of the value of each human life, and the importance of personal virtue (in this case, that of doctors).

By contrast, the new secular “bioethics” doctrine is “failing, scandalously” at the old Christian/Hippocratic objective of looking only to the interest of patients and protecting life, objectives still assumed by the general public. Hook noted several trends that led to this secular ethic. The European Enlightenment rejected “God and Christian anthropology” in the new world it proposed to build, while other contributing factors were the return of the pagan Greek idea that “man is the measure of all things,” while Darwinism denied the unique status of the human species as distinct from other animals. Darwinism also led to a concern about genetic deterioration in the species. The Baconian doctrine of science ultimately led to “scientism,” which rules out any public knowledge other than that of science. This is accompanied by “technicism,” which holds that using technology, man can master all of reality. Moral relativism and pragmatism also contributed to secular bioethics. Eugenics, the attempt to engineer a superior human race, flourished in the early twentieth century as bioethics was beginning. Eugenics involved both the promotion of races thought desirable and the elimination (through such means as sterilization, and ultimately, with Nazi Germany, the killing) of groups thought inferior (e.g., “inferior” races, and the poor).

This alternative objective to the care of the patient, which is the reengineering of humanity, results in the “dual agency” of medical professionals, i.e., they are no longer devoted to the interests of their patients but are also expected to pursue the state objective of improving humanity in ways deemed desirable. One exponent of “dual agency,” was quoted as saying that doctors can no longer say “the patient comes first,” but must take “into account the virtues of the liberal state.” Dr. Hook noted that dual agency in the twentieth century involved the complicity of doctors and medical associations in the mass killing of totalitarian regimes. Additionally, abortion in America alone, another part of the bioethics project, has claimed between 55 and 56 million human lives since its legalization in 1973. Much of the slaughter, Hook said, results from the way the first question bioethics asks, “the question of justice,” is answered. The question is simply “who counts, who has standing in the moral and political calculus for justice.” The move of the secular bioethicists has been to deny “personhood” to increasing numbers of human individuals (such as unborn children or seriously impaired individuals), while in some respect extending “personhood” to nonhuman species. Chimpanzees and other species are considered of greater worth than unborn children, while formal governmental actions in Spain recognized the rights of apes, and in Switzerland (incredibly) of plants. “Transhumanists” are much involved in this project, seeking to reengineer the human species into a post-human form of life. Yet, Hook noted, 30% of human infant mortality in the world is caused by “communicable diseases, malnutrition, and poor maternal/child conditions.”

The concept of “dual agency,” with medical professionals having a duty to patients, but also larger duty to the project to re-engineer humanity, seems to be becoming the dominant doctrine among the elite who are leading medical associations. The “seemingly obvious and rational expectations” of the traditional Judeo-Christian and Hippocratic ethics are increasingly under attack by the “mainstream bioethics agenda, in the evolving world controlled by the state, and the legion of bureaucratic institutions all demanding obedience, no matter how counterproductive to the best interests of patients, and even medical professionals.” Increasingly “regulations are forcing professionals to violate their consciences, and professional sense of duty.” It is difficult, Dr. Hook said, to instill a sense of duty and altruism,

“…when residents in training are forced to walk out on patients in the middle of active care or in the middle of a surgical procedure, which happens now nearly every day because their duty hours are up. And if the training program’s hours and staff don’t force them to leave, the programs will be put on probation, or lose accreditation. That is the environment we currently live in.”

Dr. Hook asked “is it reasonable to think we can depend on the virtue on an individual” who is routinely required to violate his conscience?

Hook offered as a signal representative of the “brave new world of biomedical ethics” Dr. Julian Savulescu of Oxford University, and editor in chief of the international publication, The Journal of Medical Ethics.  Dr. Hook went on to say,

“He is known for his advocacy of human re-engineering … [and] the transhumanist project. He coined the phrase ‘procreative beneficence’ to refer to the claimed obligation of parents to use medical technology to select children with superior traits, even if this leads to intolerance of the different and disabled … he claims that we must enhance the IQ of the overall population. He is a strong advocate, not surprisingly, of abortion and euthanasia.”

One of his more frightening proposals is “organ donation euthanasia … as a means to increase the number of available organs for transplantation. He was a strong advocate of the three parent embryo just approved by [the British] Parliament … so now we are going to be making changes that will affect subsequent generations … this is [i.e., was] thought something we would all avoid after World War II, but we’re crossing the boundary today.”

Also in line with transhumanism rather than sanctity of life, Dr. Savulescu is opposed to any right of conscientious objection by medical professionals to legally approved procedures. In particular, there should be no right to refuse procedures that cause patients inconvenience, nor should persons opposed to the transhumanist project receive medical training. His most extreme and totalitarian proposal calls for “moral enhancement,” which involves the use of medical technology (such as “brain implants”), training programs, and other efforts to modify human beings to erase any ideas in opposition to his objectives.

Some Christians have contributed to the scandal of the secular bioethics project “by fleeing from an explicitly Christian contribution to the bioethics discussion … and by wrongly claiming that Christianity supports the secular techno-progressive project.” Joseph Fletcher, still writing with the claim of a Christian perspective, offered “situation ethics,” which was “moral relativism dressed up in the Christian language of love.” He also advanced “an entirely functionalist set of criteria for humanhood … [which] would exclude not only the preborn, but a substantial number of post-natal human beings from being considered human.”

By accepting secular philosophical categories, an authentically Christian voice is “effectively out of the conversation,” according to Hook. Part of the strategy Christians have used is an appeal to natural law to find common ground between believers and unbelievers. But unless Christian anthropology is presented to the wider world as such, it has been effectively excluded with the bioethical issues ultimately to be determined according to secular criteria. This strategy is increasingly not useful because today we are becoming “a world of complete moral strangers [in which] the ability to find common ground at any fundamental level is disappearing … while once possible, it can no longer be assumed that educated persons will agree on definitions of personhood and moral standing.” Following a “radical pantheism,” contemporary thinkers are extending the concept of “personhood” even to plants, arguing for their “rights” and value for themselves.

Factual accuracy and faithfulness to Christian anthropology are needed in engaging the present situation, according to Dr. Hook. “In Christ, we truly understand what the trajectory, the telos, the purpose of human life is all about.” Here we understand that the purpose of healing is restorative, not re-engineering. The real problem facing people “is still sin and pride, not our mortality, which has been conquered by Christ.” Personhood, Hook said, should be based on the image of God, defined “relationally, and not functionally,” and that human life “begins at conception.” Hook said that “physiological life, though a good, is not the ultimate good, and is surpassed by the ultimate good of love, willing sacrifice, and obedience to the Father.” Finally, Christian bioethics should be “missional … part of our larger project of being Christ to the world.” Christians should aim “to be like Christ, not to try to become the übermensch.”

Hook noted that historically the Christian “living bioethics” involved “more than just a voice of judgment or academic discipline,” and that “the hospital, hospice, adoption programs, education for minorities, abolition of slavery, the promotion of the concept of human rights were all created in the Christian community.” But these advances occurred in a Christian world, in which Christians, medical professionals and others, were free to care for the sick and oppressed according to Biblical precepts, the Christian doctrine of love, and the valuing of each human life. This is increasingly becoming not possible as secularists attempt to apply the profoundly anti-Christian trans-humanist ethic in rules binding on anyone serving the public, both Christian individuals in secular institutions, and religious institutions serving the public. Dr. Hook reviewed this disturbing and ongoing story in his second presentation, to be summarized in a subsequent posting.

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