A Bioethics Question for Buddhists: When Does Human Life Begin?

A Bioethics Question for Buddhists: When Does Human Life Begin?

by Masao Fujii

According to Beauchamp and Childress, there are four basic, albeit abstract, principles of bioethics: respect for autonomy rooted in informed consent, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice (T. L. Beauchamp and J. F. Childress. 1989. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press). However, there really are no universal principles of bioethics; they change under the influence of the cultures and societies into which they are received. It is as if there is a separate set of bioethics for each particular culture. I also cannot stress enough that research on the increasingly diverse bioethical issues that confront us should not be limited to the field of medicine and patient treatment, but should be conducted in a transparent cultural context and from a comprehensive, humanistic perspective, including the viewpoints of philosophy, ethics, law, religion, and sociology.

Today the human genome project has been successful in decoding the entire base sequence, and I sense a frantic race to obtain patents for practical applications of the information relating to disease gleaned from the unraveling of genetic secrets. Priority has been given only to the techniques for a whole array of manipulations of life, and I predict this will result in a definitive "materialization" of life.

However, our organs and tissues are not things; they are also not just parts. At the root of this lies a view of life and death. I must point out here the absence of an awareness of the importance of life from the array of bioethical issues. We must be apprehensive about this, and I will say again, we must make academia turn its attention to the importance and dignity of life.

I would like to take up the issue of regenerative medicine, and particularly of embryonic stem (ES) cells, which is currently in the spotlight as an alternative to organ transplants for dealing with serious diseases. In 1996 the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh succeeded in creating a cloned sheep, which the scientists named Dolly. A cloned cow was born in Japan two years following the birth of Dolly. Dolly's birth had been a one-in-277 probability, however, so future prospects were fraught with difficulties.

Looking further back, mouse ES cells were successfully cultivated by Evans and Kaufman in 1981 (M. J. Evans and M. H. Kaufman. 1981. Nature 292:154-156) and Hooper and others in 1987 (Martin Hooper et al. 1987. Nature 326: 292-295); and Thomson and others of the University of Wisconsin-Madison successfully cultivated a human ES cell line in 1998. In Japan, the Act on Regulation of Human Cloning Techniques, referred to as the "cloning bill," was promulgated in 2000. On September 25, 2001, guidelines were issued, instead of a law, for the cultivation of human ES cell lines, the "Guidelines for the Derivation and Utilization of Human Embryonic Stem Cells." In July 2003, Professor Norio Nakatsuji of the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University, who had earlier successfully cultivated a line of ES cells from a crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis), succeeded in cultivating a line of human ES cells. Two more lines were cultivated three months later, so he has 3 lines, while the United States is reported to have 27 lines and Sweden 25 lines. The IFMS is his distribution agent.

While there is no question that a fertilized ovum or ES cells from a fertilized ovum are the primordia from which life originates, opinion differs as to whether they themselves constitute life. Let us look at the views of the major religions regarding the status of the human embryo. The Roman Catholic Church believes that a child is not the property of the parents, so that even an embryo has a right to be respected as a human being. As to when life begins, the church considers an embryo to be a person from the moment of conception, and has opposed in vitro fertilization, as well as the donation, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or use in research of embryos (Pope John Paul II: Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, February 22, 1987). The various denominations of Protestantism, although also Christian, believe that early-term embryos do not yet possess humanness, which develops gradually, and so they broadly sanction the donation, genetic testing, and use in research of embryos, although there is no consensus among the denominations.

Judaism holds that the embryo becomes a human being the moment it is implanted in the uterus, the key being the action by the parents of their intent to produce a child, and so it sanctions genetic testing of fertilized ova for medical purposes and the use of embryos for research. The Islamic view is that the embryo becomes a person (the soul becomes incarnate) forty days after conception; it thus also sanctions genetic testing of fertilized ova for medical purposes and the use of embryos for research.

On the other hand, Japan's Oomoto Foundation has issued a statement (Oomoto's View Regarding Japan's Permission to Conduct Research Involving Human Embryonic Stem Cells, June 12, 2000), saying that because human life begins at the moment of conception, it opposes any ES cell research that makes the fertilized ovum (early-term embryos) the object of medical experimentation. There is a technology in regenerative medicine that relies on somatic stem cells, but this stem cell cultivation technology is said to fall short when compared to the ability and the capability of giving rise to different cell types characteristic of ES cells.

As we have seen, the various religions, which generally provide us with spiritual support, have differing views on the subject, and we must consider how to resolve this. Various religious groups in Japan, such as the Honganji and Otani subsects of Jodo Shin Shu, Jodo Shu, Soto Shu, Rissho Kosei-kai, and Soka Gakkai have issued statements. Their positions are derived from their own particular doctrines, but their followers also have opinions on either side of the issue. Ultimately, there is no one assertive point of view such as that of the Oomoto Foundation. This may be a particularly Japanese characteristic.

As to the rights and wrongs of abortion, even when it is clear that the child will be born with severe handicaps, that the child's life will be extremely difficult, and that this will place a huge burden on the parents, no one should urge prospective parents to have an abortion or to have the baby. Only the individuals directly concerned can make the decision of whether or not to go through with a birth. In short, this is an issue that returns to being a subjective decision, made in view of the essence of life rather than external necessities. I think that we must look to resolving the issue by helping to make it easy to decide in response to individual circumstances, widening the choices on the basis of situation ethics. Situation ethics calls for sanctioning not A as opposed to B, but the middle ground C; I would like to think that these would be conditions set not from a "human" point of view, but from the viewpoint of the Buddha--in other words, from the viewpoint of his doctrine seen as a meaningful system.

On July 15, 2004, Professor Peter W. Andrews of the Department of Biomedical Science at the University of Sheffield, England, called for gathering all data pertaining to human ES cell lines, with the aim of comparing and standardizing human ES cells on a global scale. Issues related to human genome analysis must be protected as the common intellectual property of humankind. I pray that research on human ES cells will bring the dawn of a bright future for the human race and achieve the goal of conquering many serious diseases. Artificial elective termination of a pregnancy can be thought of as a contradictory trade-off, a sacrifice of one life so that others may succeed. There have also been experiments attempting to create stem cells from somatic cells. The progress that has been achieved in medical science and patient care is remarkable, but I believe that we must continue to constantly question so-called scientific rationality and the ethical propriety of the experiments connected with ES cell research.

Until he retired in 2004, Masao Fujii served first as professor and later dean of the Faculty of Literature at Taisho University in Tokyo, where he is now professor emeritus. He promoted research on the Japanese lifestyle based on the influence of religion through an anthropological approach. He is currently president of the Japan Association for Bioethics. He is also the translator of Bronislaw Malinowski's The Dynamics of Culture Change (Yale University Press, 1945).

This article was originally published in the October-December 2007 issue of Dharma World.


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