Extreme Measures?
By Tara Ross

The movie Extreme Measures features Gene Hackman in the role of Dr. Lawrence Myrick, an award-winning neurologist with a sinister secret: He is so obsessed with finding a cure for paralysis that he has begun conducting medical experiments on homeless men. Soon his colleague, Dr. Guy Luthan, played by Hugh Grant, is hot on his trail.

 

Needless to say, Luthan is horrified when he discovers the nature of Myrick’s secret. Myrick’s motives appear noble, to be sure. Who wouldn’t want a cure for paralysis? Yet Luthan and movie viewers can see how Myrick’s obsession has sent him straight over a moral cliff. Myrick himself, by contrast, is too fixated on his laudable objectives to recognize the moral hazards all around him.

 

How easy it is to see the moral dilemma in Extreme Measures. Why is it, then, that so many dismiss the comparable moral dilemma in stem cell research with such ease?

 

In recent days, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has become the latest politician to succumb to The Myrick Obsession. He has become so focused on the hope of a medical cure that he is seemingly oblivious to the possibility that he may be advocating the killing of babies.

 

Some will say that I am being ridiculous. They will argue that stem cell research ends the lives of embryos, not babies. Because embryos are merely human tissue—not human life—no ethical dilemma exists with stem cell research. Or so they say.

 

How amazing it is that these people seem to know the exact moment a sperm, egg, zygote, embryo, or fetus stops being merely human tissue and suddenly becomes a human life, replete with its own unique soul. Please share with us, if you will, how you came to possess such precise knowledge. You could solve the abortion debate once and for all, you know.

 

But of course no one can give such precise information. The truth of the matter is that none of us will ever know with certainty precisely when life begins. But if we are honest with ourselves and with each other, we will have to admit that this transformation appears to begin pretty early in a pregnancy—feasibly, even from the very moment of conception.

 

The issue with stem cell research is not what cures may or may not be found for crippling diseases. The true issue is whether embryos are life and, in the absence of definitive knowledge one way or another, will we err on the side of protecting young, helpless life? Or will we risk murdering those young lives for our own, ultimately selfish, ends?

 

We are living in a world that views many moral issues, such as medical research, upside down. We focus on a perceived laudable objective when we should be paying at least equal attention to the means that took us there.

 

Sometimes it seems as if practically everyone is falling prey to their own little version of The Myrick Obsession.

 

Extreme Measures concludes with Myrick’s attempt to gain Luthan’s support in his obsessive search for a cure. Luthan refuses, telling Myrick, “Maybe you’re right. Those men upstairs, maybe there isn’t much point to their lives. Maybe they are doing a great thing for the world.  Maybe they are heroes. But they didn’t choose to be. You chose for them. . . . You can’t do that. Because you’re a doctor. And you took an oath. And you’re not God. So I don’t care. . . . if you can find a cure for every disease on this planet.”

 

Similarly, I would say: Maybe those who advocate stem cell research are right. Perhaps killing the youngest among us would accomplish a great objective. Perhaps we would find cures for many diseases. But I don’t care, because we can never know with certainty that we are not slaughtering scores of babies in our pursuit of a cure. Worse, these little human beings were never given a choice. They were never asked if they wanted to sacrifice their lives to be heroes for the rest of humanity.

 

We are wrong if we seek to make that choice on their behalf.

 

Tara Ross is a regular columnist for TAEmag.com and the author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College.