Do we begin, from the very beginning, as a person? Or do we become a person somewhere along the way? This is the moral question that is raised by the remarkable advances of embryonic stem-cell research. In December 1981, Elizabeth Carr was the first in vitro or “test tube baby” born in the United States. Today there are over 400 in vitro fertilization clinics, which have aided in the births of over 100,000 children in the U.S.

In May 2003, the RAND Corporation did a study indicating that 396,526 frozen embryos are being stored in fertility clinics in America alone. The future of these almost 400,000 embryos could be: frozen storage for indefinite period of time; a few may be claimed by “adoptive” parents; they may be destroyed like other biomaterials; some could be used for embryonic stem cell research.

Stem cells are something of a “miracle” cell because they can develop into any type of cell in the body. Embryonic stem cells can become organ tissue, blood, bone, skin, muscle, any human tissue.  They are harvested after an embryo is able to grow (cells divide) for a four to five days creating what is called a blastocyst. The stem cells are removed, resulting in the destruction of the blastocyst.

The fundamental question raised by this technology is this: Are these almost 400,000 frozen embryos children? What is our moral obligation toward these embryos? Does this collection of cells contain a human soul?

Speaking against what it called a “culture of death,” the Missouri Catholic Conference of Bishops wrote in September 2005: The teaching of Christ is and remains that every human life, at every stage of its development, deserves our ultimate respect and protection.

An embryo is certainly human life. All the chromosomes are there. All the genes are there for a particular human life. But is this frozen embryo in the dish a person? If the genes are present does that mean the person is present?

Some say we become a person at conception. Others when the embryo is implanted in the womb. Others when the primitive streak appears. Others would wait until viability. 
The truth is science doesn’t tell us. We can select any of these points of development, or others, but as Ron Cole Turner suggests, we are drawing  “a line … on nature, not found in nature.”  Science cannot tell us when we become a person.
 
We must also confess that the writers of the scriptures had no possibility of imagining the complexities of modern medical research.  This issue, like all moral reasoning, is engaged with inadequate information. Who can say for certain when, in the eyes of God, we become person?

Those who insist that the person exists at conception have a reasonable position, as it is the most protective option—defining the embryo as the “least of these.”

But there is also ethical reasoning to support embryonic stem cell research.  A child is clearly a person.  An Embryo is not so clearly a person.  The gene for the eye is not the same as the eye. The gene for the brain is not the same for the brain. The presence of the genetic code is not the same as the presence of the person.  The transition happens somewhere between conception and birth, but it is hard to tell exactly where.  What is clear is the disease that is attacking the human family. The scientific community is telling us that we need to research both adult and embryonic stem cells, and we need to see where each can lead to address the diseases that plague us. It seems to me that support of stem cell research does not violate the biblical warrant to respect life that belongs to God, but rather upholds it. I fear that focus on saving embryos is diverting us from the least of these, as Jesus described them: the sick, the imprisoned, the poor, the victims of war and violence, children.  

In his essay, “The Evangelical Love Affair with Enlightenment Science,”1 noted religious historian George Marsden debunks the popular conception, often conveyed in the mainstream media, that the American conservative evangelical tradition is, by its very nature, hostile toward modern science. According to Marsden, nothing could be further from the truth. American conservative evangelicalism has, in fact, placed such confidence in the unity of biblical and scientific truth that this presumption often forms the basis for its apologetics, which explains why the movement is, for instance, so invested in intelligent design theory at present.

In his March 2, 2007 blog, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr., took the evangelical “love affair” with science to the next level. In an effort to brace the conservative evangelical world for the prospect that the “gay gene” may one day be found, Mohler suggested that such a discovery, rather than prompt one to reconsider the classification of homosexuality as a sin, might instead provide parents of children with this gene an opportunity to use science to counter its impact, presumably to keep them from falling into sin and possibly eternal damnation. “If a biological basis [for homosexuality] is found,” Mohler wrote, “and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.”

More often than not, conservative evangelicals cite divine grace as the best remedy “to cure” those with same-sex attractions. And while I personally disagree with the notion that grace is to homosexuality what chemotherapy is to cancer, such a stance at least avoids Mohler’s theologically unfortunate insinuation that science might, in the case of homosexuals, serve as a proxy for the justifying power of divine grace. Could Pelagius himself have said it any better than Mohler has here?

In a subsequent blog, prompted by angry correspondence from both the right and left wings of the theological and political spectrums, Mohler stated that he “never even mentioned genetic therapies or germ-line experiments” in his earlier blog and that he is “adamantly opposed to genetic therapies of such a sort.” An article in Christianity Today,  however, reported that Mohler indicated he “would be open to a hormonal treatment” and believed that “Christians should support treatments that would spare a child from a lifetime of struggle.” In that same article, Wheaton College provost Stanton Jones was quoted in support of Mohler stating, “Our starting assumption is that the homosexual condition is not God’s creational intent for humanity, so if we have the opportunity to influence its occurrence, we should be open.”

Just when we thought humanity had already come up with a comprehensive list of ways to make ourselves righteous before God, Mohler and Jones have given us a preview of the next chapter in the sordid history of self-justification: justification by hormonal therapy. What’s next? The establishment of the kingdom of God through genetic engineering? The dawn of the new creation in a Pfizer research lab?

Ever since Paul’s encounter with the Teachers in Galatia, Christians of all stripes have been united in the belief that justification is an unmerited gift from God, not something human beings have to earn the right to receive. Surely Paul, not to mention Augustine and Luther, are up in heaven pulling the hair out of their beatified heads in response to Mohler’s comments. What’s different this time, as the conservative evangelical “love affair” with modern science takes what is perhaps its strangest turn yet, is that Orwell and Huxley are, no doubt, doing the same as well.

1George M. Marsden, “The Evangelical Love Affair with Enlightenment Science,” in Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), pp. 122-152.