Life As It Is: Biology for the Public Sphere

  • William F. Loomis
University of California Press: 2008. 272 pp. $24.95 9780520253575 | ISBN: 978-0-5202-5357-5

Science's task is to explain the natural world: what it is, how it works and why it is the way it is. Ethics is about the oughts and the shoulds. Most ethicists — religious and secular — agree that knowledge of the natural world helps us make better, or at least better-informed, ethical decisions. But, as David Hume, Thomas Henry Huxley and G. E. Moore have noted, a particular understanding of nature does not dictate a unique moral stance. For every Alexander Pope declaring “Whatever is, is right,” there is a Rose Sayer (from the film The African Queen) retorting, “Nature ... is what we are put in this world to rise above!”

It is the complicated interplay of moral decisions and biological sciences that motivates cell biologist William F. Loomis. His brief book, Life As It Is, is a tour of the brave new biology relevant to such social issues as abortion, euthanasia, the use of embryonic stem cells, cloning, overpopulation and global warming. Loomis holds that scientific evidence should be taken into account when making socially important decisions. He provides a fascinating, if occasionally disjointed, survey of topics that bear on these decisions: the nature and evolution of life, and current scientific thought regarding consciousness, psychology and social behaviour.

Sometimes it is questionable whether the scientific aspects of a situation are most relevant to the ethical decision. Is it ethically permissible to destroy the surplus human embryos created for in vitro fertilization (IVF), for example? Loomis believes the answer should be shaped by a better understanding of the nature of cells.

Loomis emphasizes that at the cellular level life is cheap: at any given moment, billions of bacteria in our body are dying. A human zygote is merely a single cell, so shouldn't we think of it as such rather than the multicellular, functioning, conscious and precious baby into which it might develop? If a zygote is just a cell, and cells die regularly, then the answer to whether it is ethically permissible to destroy it is yes. But this argument comes after the ethical question of whether a zygote is just a cell, which is one that science cannot answer.

The ethical status of a human zygote or early-stage embryo turns on the issue of personhood. For those who believe in a soul, the moral standing of the zygote is largely unaffected by the nature of life at the cellular level. Belief in souls is a first principle, unlikely to be either proved or disproved by science.

By contrast, as Loomis correctly notes, science may provoke a rethinking of religious dogma. Catholic theology holds that a soul is infused into a fertilized egg. So if an eight-celled embryo can be made to produce eight separate human beings, do they share a soul, or are seven new souls somehow generated?

This conundrum has led some Catholic theologians to contend that the soul is infused not at fertilization, but only when cells of the dividing organism lose their plasticity. Other theologians try to accommodate scientific facts about cells in other ways. Although scientific facts about the nature of a developing embryo may have profound consequences for Christian (or at least Catholic) thinking about souls — as a first principle, the concept of a soul is unlikely to be abandoned, and will be a factor in ethical decisions about many issues that biology touches on.

Policy-makers deciding between contending positions are ultimately forced to make political decisions, not scientific ones. Science — ideally, and in most cases — influences the thought of the proponents of the contending positions, and they in turn influence the policy-makers. But science is rarely the deciding factor. In many cases, such as the example of the human embryos in IVF, the contenders on both sides can agree on the science and disagree on the policy, owing to a disagreement about whether (and which) religious concerns are most relevant. And such disagreements are beyond the competence of science to adjudicate.

Refreshingly, Loomis's discussion of ethical issues roams beyond the comparatively narrow issues of abortion and euthanasia and the like. He devotes a final important chapter to sustainability. In the face of pollution, global warming and population increase, how will it be possible to ensure an adequate supply of food, water and energy for all of Earth's people while maintaining respect for the well-being of other creatures? Loomis recommends a programme of voluntary population reduction, requiring both political leadership and a radical change of public opinion.

Loomis identifies the source of his title Life As It Is — his wife apparently — but not its significance. The idea that a realistic understanding of biology will usher in a paradise of ethical correctness is naive: the panoply of extra-scientific considerations that influence ethical decision-makings cannot be ignored or minimized. A weakness of Loomis's book is his comparative neglect of such considerations. But if his intention is less ambitious, namely that a realistic appreciation of biology ought to inform ethical decision-making, then that is incontrovertible.