Book Review: Embryo

Embryo: A Defense of Human Life

by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen

Doubleday, 2008

ISBN 978-0-385-52282-3

(Available as an audiobook on audible.com.)

The truth is, I picked this book up because I am a Chris & Laurie Tollefsen fan. Yeah, yeah, their philosophy is good (who knew!), but what I really like is them. Their cooking, their conversation, their de-cluttered home – hard not to like people who excel you in every way, and have the courtesy not to point it out. Not that I wasn’t interested in the book, of course. But I don’t think I would have trudged to my local catholic bookstore and actually bought a copy without that personal connection.

Wow. Way worth it. Even if there is no hope whatsoever of any kind of culinary benefit to you for reading this book, you still ought to read it. Even if you aren’t pro-life. And in particular if you aren’t catholic, because it is not a book about catholic (or even theist) perspectives on the topic.

–> If you are catholic, you should read it so that you can speak intelligently to people who want to understand your position on the proper treatment of human embryos, but who aren’t particularly interested in arguments that begin ‘Well, the Pope says . . .’.

Why Philosophy? Philosophy*, as I understand it, is more or less the study of What People Think About Things. For example, how should I treat my fellow human beings, and why so? This is a philosophical question. It can be answered with respect to God, of course, but if you are person who doesn’t believe in God, you still may have an opinion on right and wrong behavior, and probably even some good reasons for your opinion. In this book, George & Tollefsen argue that human embryos deserve ‘full moral respect’ – that is, that they share certain fundamental human rights along with the rest of the species (that’s us). They lay out the reasons for their opinion chapter by chapter.

What’s in the book? And am I smart enough to read it?

The opening chapter, “What is at Stake in the Embryo Experimentation Debate” is a sort of presenting of the situation. It will help tremendously here and throughout the book if you have a passing awareness of the public debate on the topic, and a little bit of familiarity with philosophical terms. The text is eminently readable – very clear and precise, and with quick prose given the technical nature of the topic — but this is not Embryos & Philosophy for Dummies. (Someone please suggest a link for those who want to do the pre-req reading. If nothing else, reading the Secondhand Smoke blog for a few weeks might help.)

Likewise, the second chapter, which lays out the biology of embryonic development, really requires that you have completed high school biology and have some vague recollection of what you learned on the topic. If words like “RNA” and “meiosis” ring a bell, you’re good. Don’t worry if you can’t exactly define them just now; as you read your memory will be refreshed and it will make sense again. It may be a little bit of work to follow the detailed explanations, but you can do it.

After answering the question of ‘is it a little tiny human being?’ in the embryology chapter, George & Tollefsen move onto the philosophical question of what to do with those tiny beings in the remainder of the book. Topics covered include things you might not have known people doubted, such as “What is a person?” (Once a person always a person? Or does your personhood come and go according to this or that factor? It is a relevant question, and one that apparently folks have some interesting ideas about.)

And then, once they’ve established their reasons for thinking that not only are embryos human beings, but they are, in fact, human persons, the book proceeds with building the arguments for what rights persons have, and therefore how they ought to be treated by all the other people.

Who should, and should not, read this book?

This is an important and useful book, regardless of your opinions on the topic. If you beleive in the human rights of embryos, it will help crystallize your thinking and recognize why others may disagree. If you don’t beleive in such rights, it will help you understand the logic of people who do. So it is a book that facilitates the mutual understanding essential to any hope of finding common ground.

And it is particularly useful because it is not a religious book. You may, of course, have religious reasons for your opinions, but those reasons won’t make much sense to people who don’t share your religion. Embryo argues that respect for the rights of the human embryo is not the province of any particular religion, but is in the same category of fundamental human rights that people of any religion or no religion at all tend to agree on.

–> And here is an important caveat: This book assumes that you are not a Nazi. If you need someone to explain to you why people deserve the same rights regardless of race or religion, you need to get that explanation elsewhere.  This book assumes you already hold that view. Likewise, it assumes you understand the difference between people and animals.  If you think it is okay to eat people, or to do deadly medical experiments on them without their full informed consent, again, you need to look to some other work to understand why this is, in the view of the rest of us, not so.

I warn you of this, because George & Tollefsen really do hit a tremendous variety of arguments against their opinion, and deal with them respectfully and thoroughly. [Do you wonder, for example, whether you are really the person who inhabits your body, or if ‘you’ is something else? They address this possibility.] But these two particular views I mention above (not a nazi, people are not fodder for your whims) are assumed, and at times even central to their arguments.

For nearly all readers, this shouldn’t be a problem, I hope. But I am aware that ‘nearly all’ does leave out a select few.

**

In summary: Highly Recommended. Well written, thorough, examines the debate from every angle. The tone is charitable and friendly, at times even humorous. Deserves to become a standard work on the topic.

*I mention this because if you are like me, you may not really have that clear of an idea of what exactly it is philosophers do. I’m just starting to catch on. And it’s relevant to this book review, because you can’t really know what is in the book if you don’t understand what Philosophy means, or at least what it seems to mean in this context.