Killing Preemies

This story, about the Nuffield Council on Bioethics concluding that preemie babies born before 22 weeks should not receive medical treatment, is making it's rounds, now appearing on the front page of msn.com. What is the clifnotes version of their conclusion? "We recommend infanticide." And tragically, the Church of England agrees with them. Listen to one of the committee members:

"Natural instincts are to try to save all babies, even if the baby’s chances of survival are low,” said Professor Margaret Brazier who chaired the committee that produced the report. "However, we don’t think it is always right to put a baby through the stress and pain of invasive treatment if the baby is unlikely to get better and death is inevitable.”

First, it is very dangerous to explain away our natural instincts. Our intuitions are often more right and more reliable than all the lofty philosophical arguments put together because God wrote His law on our hearts (Rom 2:14-15) so that we have an intuitive sense of right and wrong. That doesn't mean that we can't silence it, or that every intuition is from God, but no argument is needed to know the difference between the Holocaust and the cow death thanks to McDonald's. We just know one is evil and other is not.

Next, on non-religious grounds, if I was an evolutionist, survival is the highest good and goal of life, that is, the passing of my genes into the next generation (if I remember correctly, this is the argument of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene). Therefore, even evolutionists should see this as evil because it deprives the preemie of even a chance at it's highest good: survival.

Third, it seems to me that living is worth "stress and pain," just ask those who endure chemotherapy or dialysis week in and week out in order to live. We cling tightly to things we value most. Contrary to the Islamofacists, life is more valuable than death. That's another moral intuition that tells us the health of 22 week old preemies should be sought after.

Also, one might say that since the baby can't speak we can't know whether they'd want to live or now. But, does it follow that since we don't know what they'd want, we should kill them. Should we assume they'd want to die, even if they knew the "struggle and pain" they'd go through? Whether it's here, or abortion, or euthanasia, it seems we should give the benefit of doubt to life. It seems we should err on the side of life.

Finally, it does not follow that we shouldn't treat severely ill patients, whether 22 week old preemies or not, simply because "death is inevitable." I don't know if this escaped Mrs. Brazier's notice, but death is inevitable for everybody. The logic of her argument leads to no treatment for any illness, which then leads to the shutting down of all hospitals. That's one of the ways you know your argument might be a little off, when it would lead to effects like hers.

One of the criteria by which civilizations are judged is how do they treat their most vulnerable. The West's report card isn't looking too good right now.