It seems that after being away from the island on a two-week holiday, I find that a discussion has erupted in the press about the definition of person vis-à-vis the protection of the human embryo. It would be interesting to point out that there are so many definitions of ‘person’ that if one wants to use the term to refer to the protection of human life, then it would be far easier to use the term ‘human being’ with which it may be coterminous. Unlike the term ‘human being’, which is a scientific and objective term, the term ‘person’ is very subjective. It is useless looking up this term in English dictionaries as the definition there depends often on the philosophical undercurrents of the people who wrote them. There are several definitions of person where ‘a person is understood to be a receiver of rights by society’, but we broadly classify the meaning of personhood into two, some say three, definitions.
The definition of ‘person’ that I am in line with, is called’ ontological personhood’. This refers to a being (ontology), an essence, of a self-conscious rational nature. A human person is a subject of rights because he belongs to the species ‘homo sapiens’. Since homo sapiens is a species which is rational to the degree of being self-conscious, then members of that species ought to merit special respect even if they are in stages of their life (asleep, anaesthetised, senilie) or development (foetus or mental disability) which renders them unable to exhibit or attain this self-consciousness. One ought to point out that God as trinity is also referred to as made up of three ‘persons’ even though their essence is not human, at least not two of the three!
The second definition of person is ‘functionalist’. That is, society imparts rights to human beings only if they exhibit certain functions. These properties may vary extensively. It may be the formation of the primitive streak in the human embryo (two weeks), nervous tissue, the brain, birth and some even ascribe personhood to full self-consciousness attained at two to three years after birth! As you may see, functionalist definitions are very subjective and elastic!
There is now a third category arising. Peter Singer et al, include in the personhood list certain animals that exhibit certain rational capacities, such as some dogs, monkeys, cetaceans and apes. These often ascribe to the particular animal being, a typical member of its kind, full personhood rights even if in certain individual members particular psychological capacities are absent!
Because of the above confusion, it is always better to use the term human being when matters pertaining to the protection of human life arise, otherwise one creates a recipe for confusion, giving those who do not value the right to human life from conception till natural death, the opportunity to cloud the issues involved.
Incidentally, on opening my computer recently, I found an interesting post on my e-mail. A request in July 2011 from the British Lord Alton to the Minister of Health, Lord Howe, showed that in the UK over 30 embryos are created for every live birth through IVF! Moreover, since IVF started being practised in 1991in the UK, doctors have created more than 3.1 million human embryos resulting in only 94,090 successful births. Of the remainder, 1,455,832 embryos have been discarded, 101,605 were destroyed through research and 764,311 were frozen. (It also stated that in 2009 the HFEA had warned that IVF babies have a 30 per cent higher risk of genetic abnormality.) That means that more than one and a half million human beings have been killed in 20 years. I hope that these statistics help enlighten the minds of those who are eager to introduce IVF legislation into our country allowing the freezing of human embryos as a routine procedure, when there are viable alternatives with frozen ova (or eggs) available. As for myself, I do not ever wish to have that kind of human blood on my hands nor can I stand aside to let those who wish so to have their way, resulting in an increasing commodification of human life.
Michael Asciak MD
BIRKIRKARA