01-04-2007 - Traces, n. 4
Broadening reason

Open Letter
to Professor
Cattaneo

We offer here the letter that eight students of the State University of Milan sent to Professor Cattaneo after the conference she organized with UniStem, the interdepartmental research center, on “Human Embryonic Stem Cells,” which was held in Classroom A of the Pharmacy Faculty on January 31, 2007.

We are students in the Science Faculties of this university. We are passionate about the chance to deepen our knowledge of the reality surrounding us, in all its aspects. For us, too, through our studies, science is our daily work. For many of us, one of our highest aspirations is to work as researchers and contribute to the development of science. In our era, science has been one of the most fertile branches of human knowledge, one of the most decisive in the development of a community. Nobody can be unimpressed when, in the span of a few decades, the scientific method has opened windows on problems that not long ago seemed beyond our intellectual capacity. Who is not filled with wonder at the breakthrough in deciphering the human genetic code? Or how, for example, could we not be thrilled at the possibility of positing reasonable affirmations about the very first instants of the universe? Today, the power and potential of science are greatly evident.
But within this grand adventure of knowledge, are we really sure that the ends justify the means? It seems to us that every serious commitment to research sets into play two protagonists: our question, our thirst for knowledge, and reality. There is something that lies deeper than any future patentable work, that is more original than any possible application, no matter how important: it is the object of our study, which always dictates the method of our work. This is why we were very concerned, perhaps even a bit shaken, as we left the public conference you organized in our Faculty. Is it possible to do research without asking the main question: What do I have here in front of me? In the case in question: What is an embryo? Is it human life? You proposed leaving the answer to these questions to individual conscience, to religious faiths, giving the impression that nothing certain can be affirmed on a topic like this. But even if this were so, if we weren’t sure that a certain reality is a “human being,” wouldn’t it be more reasonable, then, to be prudent? Perhaps you had some priests speak (who, you may have noted, defended reason more than the catechism) because the “seculars” invited gave frankly unpresentable answers, such as that of “ethics by stages.” This theory, proposed by Dr. Demetrio Neri, Bioethics Professor at the University of Messina, disturbs us profoundly in its assertion that we should create various levels or “stages” of value in the expressions of human life–in particular, assigning a low level to the person who is not yet completely developed (embryos and fetuses) and a higher one to the full, true human level. Isn’t this equivalent to formulating a scale of dignity based on the potential the person can attain? For example, we could have schizophrenics, or those with Down’s syndrome or malformations assigned to slightly lower stages than that of an adult considered healthy and sound. And so on. Thus, Dr. Neri’s theory could justify a classification of human beings that stirs up sinister memories. Even more disturbing was the assertion made during the conference that “it is right to use human embryos, because in doing so we will save the lives of many animals that we now have to sacrifice for the good of research.” Is this the greatest cognitive effort that a group at the avant-garde of our university can or wishes to produce to “defend” the legitimacy of its research? These are examples of an error into which we can fall, but which instead we must battle. We believe that there is a problem of method, that is, a too narrow use of reason, such that reason ceases to exist as soon as we touch upon questions that cannot be decided by the scientific method. So we feel we are intransigent, properly rigorous researchers when we speak of DNA, the genetic code, or pluripotent cells, but we leave the field open to the most varied interpretations in problems such as life or ethics. In the questions that most interest us as human beings, we put the weapon of reason back into its sheath. But we needn’t await further progress in scientific research, further experiments or demonstrations, to establish that an embryo left to develop will become the human being that it was from the very beginning, that it won’t develop into an elephant or a mouse. This is an elementary, and also a wider use of reason, without which we will be prey to the dictatorship of interpretations on all the most important issues of human existence. We don’t want to be children who demand to try everything, letting ourselves be tossed around by the thousands of ideological winds surrounding us. We want to be adults who do not eschew making choices, who use to the full our own capacity for judgment.

Michele Benetti, President
of the Conference of University Students of the University of Milan
Enrico Toso, Representative on
the Mathematics, Physics, and Natural Sciences Faculty Council
Beatrice Bignami, Representative
on the Veterinary Medicine Faculty Council
Daniele Cosi, Representative
on the Pharmacy Faculty Council
Riccardo Branca, Faculty
of Pharmacy student
Agnese Taboni, Faculty
of Pharmacy student
Alessandro Carabelli, Faculty
of Pharmacy student
Maddalena Zizzola, Faculty
of Pharmacy student