My pal Stanley

As you can read in a few other places, Stanley Hauerwas gave the annual Slater-Maguire lecture at St. Margaret's this year (last year's lecture was given by CBC musicologist Howard Dyck, and next year it will be Ian Hutchinson, head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT).

I heard Hauerwas speak at CMU a few years ago, and was excited to hear him again. I wasn't disappointed. He's nothing if not an interesting speaker. He has a heavy Texas accent and a surprisingly high and nasal voice. In conversation, his speech is peppered with profanities and enthusiastic, contageous guffaws.

He spoke a few times—once on Sunday evening, preaching on the lectionary texts (the Gospel was the resurrection of Lazurus), then there was a reception of sorts, where he answered questions, then on Monday evening he delivered a lecture entitled "Why Nobody in North America Wants to Die", followed by a question period.

He argued that in our modern world we have forgotten how to die. Medical science tries to convince us that we will get out of this alive—but it's not true. We're all going to die. It's just a matter of time. So the question is: how do you want to die?

We are taught that there is nothing worse than death. We fear death more than anything else. If we may but live another month, it is worth anything to us. And when we finally do die, we typically want to die suddenly. In our sleep. With no pain. We want to die without ever knowing that we are dead. In the Middle Ages, they prayed God to save them from a sudden death. They wanted to prepare for death—prepare their souls, say goodbye to their loved ones.

His lecture ranged over a variety of subjects connected to death, and I may summarise some of them in future posts, but one of the most controversial and interesting things he said was a response to a question about stem-cell research.

For Hauerwas, the issue of stem-cell research is directly connected to abortion and adoption issues. Stem-cell research is justified on the grounds that the embryos being destroyed for the research are extra and would be destroyed anyway. But the only reason there are extra embryos floating around is that fertility clinics produce them. But Hauerwas thinks that fertility clinics have no moral reason to exist. In a world where abortion clinics exist, why do fertility clinics also exist? In a world where fertility clinics exist, why do abortion clinics also exist? Fertility clinics exist because people want THEIR child, not someone else's. But that is pagan bullshit. Christians know that even biological children are adopted. So there shouldn't BE extra embryos whose destruction nobody cares about. Fertility clinics are already a moral issue.

And stem-cell research has been seriously oversold. We get told that if they are allowed to do stem-cell research then Parkinson's (for example) will be cured. But the truth is firstly that we (they) have absolutlely no idea what problems will arise. It is possible that a year of concentrated stem-cell research will lead to a cure for Parkinson's. But it is also possible that twenty years of sustained research will lead to no breakthrough. It is possibly that there is no cure. Secondly, the argument is based on a flawed conception of death—as if all doctors have to do is solve all of the diseases, and no one will die anymore. What do you want to die from? Because you will die. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to care for people, but it does mean that every single one of us is terminally ill, and there is no cure. The ends can never justify the means—because ultimately the ends are always the same. Thirdly, the principal reason medical researchers want to use embryonic stem cells instead of adult stem cells is that embryonic stem cells grow faster. But adult stem cells offer the same potential research benefits, without the same moral issues. Stem cell research is a moral perversion based on a moral perversion based on a moral perversion (based on a moral perversion?).