Is the Doctor Pro-Life? (Worst title ever)

        I understand that anytime anyone writes or speaks about abortion they are crossing over the niceties of casual conversations and have the potential of offending a large number of people. In this particular blog post I am consciously aware that I am running the risk of offending a myriad of people groups. They are as follows (in no particular order [Please do not be offended by the ordering of the people groups]): Pro-Choice advocates; Embryologist; Scientists who work in stem cell research; scientists in general; people who could benefit from therapy that could potentially come from embryonic stem cell research; and Dr. Who fans.

The good doctor

       I have recently become acquainted with the Doctor, and despite the first two episodes (in which I just trudged through), have become quite a fan of the show. I have never enjoyed watching any other Sci-Fi movies or TV shows, so it was quite a surprise for me to enjoy Dr. Who so much. That being said, I have only watched about 16 episodes so far, and run the risk of writing something about the show that could irritate the hardcore fans.
       I also am not an embryologist or a scientist, so all of my comments referencing embryonic stem cell research will be surface level and relevant to my belief that all human life has value, which I ground in the Biblical truth that we are made in the image of God.

Hame

       SPOILER ALERT: I recently watched the "New Earth" episode from the second season of Dr. Who featuring the tenth Doctor, David Tenant. Rose and the Doctor were in New New York investigating a hospital run by the "Sisters" (Ok, they were basically humans with cat faces and claws dressed like nuns). While they were there they discovered that the patients were healing at a suspiciously remarkable rate. Upon further investigation, the Doctor and Rose stumbled upon thousands upon thousands of pod like prison cells

The bad doctor

(not much different than Dr. Evil's escape pod) where human clones were isolated from each other and the rest of the world, and infected with every disease in the universe in order to experiment upon them in the hopes of finding a potential cure. Of course, the Doctor was livid with the whole idea. Here's a bit of the transcript:
Cat-Lady (AKA Hame): It's for the greater cause.
Dr.: Novice Hame. When you took your vows, did you agree to this?
Hame: The Sisterhood has sworn to help.
Dr.: What, by killing?

The clones

Hame: They're not real people. They're specially grown. They have no proper existence.
Dr.: What's the turnover, hmm? Thousand a day? Thousand the next? Thousand the next? How many thousands? For how many years? How Many?!
Hame: Mankind needed us. They came to this planet with so many illnesses. We couldn't cope. We did try. We tried everything. We tried using clone-meat and bio-cattle, but the results were too slow, so the Sisterhood grew its own flesh. That's all they are, flesh.
Dr.: These people are alive.

Good Doctor, Bad Theology

Hame: But think of those humans out there, healthy and happy, because of us.
Dr.: If they live because of this, then life is worthless.
Hame: But who are you to decide that?
       The Doctor then goes on in heroic fashion, albeit blasphemous, to claim himself as the highest authority, and he was shutting it down.
       There are so many relevant comparisons between the life of these humans created to be experimented on and then destroyed in order to enhance the life of others in the TV show and the humans created to be experimented on and then destroyed in order to enhance the life of others in real life.
 

The Tuskegee Experiment

Tuskegee, Alabama: Stardate 1932-1972--The United States

Syphilis induced blindness and insanity

Public Health Service desired to study the natural progress of untreated syphilis. Syphilis produces a wide range of symptoms and disorders in those who suffer from it, and the government wished to have a good test sample to experiment on and watch as the disease unfolded. Who better to experiment on than the negros? After all, they aren't really people, they're just flesh. And if they are technically human, they still aren't like us. (Hitler said the Jews were only human in the strictest sense of the word.) The study included a total of 600 poor, rural African American men who thought they were receiving free healthcare from the government. Of the 600 men, 399 had previously contracted the disease while 201 had not. They received free medical care, meals, and burial insurance. They were not, however, told they had syphilis, or treated for their condition. They were told they had "bad blood."
       When the experiment began there was no cure for syphilis. That all changed 15 years into the experiment with the discovery of penicillin and it became the standard treatment for syphilis. At that point the scientists could have treated all of the patients with penicillin and recorded their findings, but they chose to carry on with the experiment without treating any one of them, or even letting them know what they had. In 1972 someone leaked what was going on in the study, excuse me for a second, (ahem) 25 YEARS AFTER THEY DISCOVERED PENICILLIN AS THE STANDARD TREATMENT FOR SYPHILIS, and the program was shut down. Many of these men died, but not before they infected their wives, and passed the disease on to their children congenitally.

Much deserved, long overdue apology

       I'm sure the men conducting the experiment argued that what they were doing was for the good of society. I'm sure they felt like these 600 men were instrumental in only what they could give to society medically, and not intrinsically because they were made in the image of God.
       Now to the petri dish. There are currently thousands of frozen human embryos waiting. "Waiting for what?" is the question. Most of the embryos will die in the thawing process. Some are waiting to be implanted in their mother's uterus and with God's help will attach to the uterine wall and grow into a happy baby boy or girl. Others are leftover embryos from moms and dads who were successful in a previous attempt at pregnancy, and therefore are not needed anymore. These embryos are waiting to either be adopted or to be dissected for their parts. If they are adopted they will be just like the previous embryo, if they are dissected they will be allowed to grow for 14 days in a petri dish and then harvested for their parts.
 

A Snowflake Baby

I have to admit, I didn't used to be bothered by embryonic stem cell research that much until I seen pictures of babies who were adopted as embryos through organizations like Snowflake Adoptions. I realized that I was once exactly as they are now (minus the frozen part), and all they need to live a normal life is time and the proper environment. Harvesting these tiny embryos for what they can do for society is just as bad as the Tuskegee Experiment, and what happened on the New Earth episode of Dr. Who. We are valuable, not for what we can do for society, but for who we are--image bearers of God.
       SPOILER ALERT: Surprise surprise, the Doctor saved the day and all of the disease ridden humans were healed from their diseases. The Doctor excitedly proclaimed to Cassandra (who temporarily resided in Rose), "A brand new form of life. New humans. Look at them. Look. Grown by cats, kept in the dark, fed by tubes, but completely, completely alive. You can't deny them, because you helped create them."
       So okay, I'm willing to state categorically that ALL of the frozen embryos we have in laboratories across America were NOT raised by cats, but other than that there are some incredible similarities. They are brand new life (but not a new form of life), new humans, kept in the dark, fed somehow (maybe by a tube), and "completely, completely alive."
       We live in a time when human therapeutic cloning is not a crazy science fiction story line way off in the future. We are currently dissecting human embryos to harvest their parts like they were farm animals. The only thing stopping them from being allowed to live past 14 days is some kind of moral dilemma that after that day it miraculous becomes human life. The question is now and has always been, "If it's a living human being at 15 days, what was it at 14 days?" If it's growing it's alive. If it has human parents, it's human. And I think all humans are valuable.
       We are living in a culture that has devalued human life to what each person can do for society so much that I believe if we could clone people to farm out their organs (like the movie Never Let Me Go did with orphans) we would. And I think that is wrong.

Instrumental or Intrinsic? What makes people valuable?