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Singer moves on to another point about uniqueness, which he sees as an Achilles' heel of the pro-life movement:

This possibility highlights the weakness of the argument that abortion, too, is wrong because it destroys a genetically unique human being. By this reasoning, a woman who finds herself pregnant at an inconvenient time could have an abortion, as long as she preserves a single cell from the fetus to ensure that its unique genetic potential is preserved.

Such a focus on genetic uniqueness entails genetic reductionism: the idea that all you are is your genes, so if we can come up with someone else with the same genes, we still have you. This argument looks worse the longer you wait—twin embryos may share genes, but they are not interchangeable with each other, and we are not better off with only one of them. This is more plainly false later in pregnancy, as even in the womb the unborn twins develop in different ways. But Singer is making a wider point. He goes on to ask why the uniqueness lost when one child is aborted will not be replaced when another is conceived—who otherwise would not have been. Yet the argument has never been about uniqueness itself; it is about the uniqueness of human beings. And if the human species is denied a special status that transcends our genes, his argument shows how little dignity remains.

But Singer's intervention is interesting. He has largely preoccupied himself with the older ethics issues—what I call "Bioethics 1," the abortion/euthanasia questions we have debated for centuries. Here he moves into "Bioethics 2," from taking life to making and manipulating it. His is a radical challenge to the view of human nature that has long determined the best in Western culture. Once he has finished, it is difficult to see what will be left.

Korean doctors are starting to investigate the use and abuse of human eggs by Dr. Hwang.

Tests are now complete on the cell lines he claimed to have created, and 9 out of 11 are confirmed fakes; there are suspicions that the others may be also.

There has been good reporting on the Hwang debacle in the English-language Korea Times—most recently, a story about an 8-year old boy who had idolized Hwang.

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Previous Life Matters columns include:

Bethlehem's Bioethics | Christmas in the early 21st century. (Dec. 22, 2005)

A Common Cause for Our Common Humanity | Left and right come together in defense of us. (Dec. 14, 2005)

Face Off—and Back On | Face transplants raise more questions than answers. (Dec. 8, 2005)

Bioethics in Narnia? | C. S. Lewis was way ahead of the curve. (Nov. 30, 2005)

Inventing Ethics | A collaborator walks out on the South Korean cloning genius, citing ethical lapses. (Nov. 18, 2005)

The Killing Fields of Holland: Next It's the Kids | From the Netherlands to California, from stem cells to nanotechnology, how we treat life matters. (Nov. 9, 2005)

Nations United on Bioethics | But is anybody in the West reading the new declaration? (Oct. 19, 2005)

Dr. Frist's Dilemma | The Majority Leader's contradictions mirror the opinions of the public at large. (Oct. 11, 2005)

Cloning Still Haunts California | Remember Prop. 71? Stem-cell research supporters hope voters don't remember the promises they made. (Oct. 5, 2005)

Leon Kass, a Bioethics Legend, Steps Down | The man who led the President's Council on Bioethics brought protests from the industry and directed groundbreaking studies. (Sept. 21, 2005)

A Manufactured Womb of One's Own | The commodification of children and an admission of stem-cell hype. (Sept. 8, 2005)

The Stem-Cell Conspiracy | The Washington Post muddles a major breakthrough in adult stem-cell research, while the U.K. marches blindly on. (Aug. 29, 2005)

More CT articles on bioethics are available on our Life Ethics page.

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January (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50