I was intrigued by an issue raised in Dr. Fred Grinnell’s essay, “Posthumanism–The Path Not Yet Taken.” Specifically, Grinnell mentions the controversy regarding the existence of the free-living human embryo and whether such embryo qualifies as a “person” or a clump of human cells? (par. 5). Such a question is one of common debate today, but as Grinnell mentions, the answer particularly remains the focus to “numerous ethical, legal and political disputes…” (par. 5). However, much of society accepts that early human embryos lack similar personhood “rights” to that of a fetus. Yet, again as Grinnell explains, what do we do when the experiments—because they are indeed experiments–of the transgenic human embryos goes wrong? (par. 6) What happens when these babies are malformed, disabled, or dysfunctional? Strictly from a legal standpoint, will these experimental “lives” be allowed to be euthanized, under the circumstances? Well, as of now, of course not: a person commits murder if he/she intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual (Tex. Pen. Code Sect. 19.02 (1)). And I am not even mentioning morals or ethics, but I am saying that, hypothetically, new laws would have to be created to protect, or in the alternative, exterminate, these individuals since we are, essentially, treading on a new territory of existence.
So, as Professor Brown has mentioned in class, what comes first, the law or the ethics behind it? Do we, again hypothetically, construct the law based on morals or the morals based on the law? As Weston, author of A Practical Companion to Ethics in Ch. 2 mentions, we make laws, based in part, on ethics, but “following the law is not enough for ethics. It prohibits certain harms. But there it stops—as it probably should” (28). Therefore, in this instance, while law may act as a “minimal morality shaper,” how society enacts, applies, and “lives” the law further complicates the issue of terminating experimental transgenic human embryos.