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Without secular protections, religious bigotry all too often results. Consider the Rushdie affair. Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, which was highly critical of the Prophet Muhammed, and sexually offensive to Moslem leaders. Rushdie was condemned to death by Iran and the Ayatollah. This led to international withdrawals of embassies by Western European countries. Internal debates about the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression occurred especially in England and the United States. Workers at mall-based book stores were threatened by calls and bomb scares. And the book was kept off the shelves. Full-page advertisements were taken out by Waldenbooks defending its decision to sell the book. Similar advertisements were taken out by Moslems defending their religion and their religious sensibilities. A similar occurrence involved the writings of Taslima Nasrin of Bangladesh, a physician and nonbeliever who is critical of Moslem views of women and marriage. She is now in hiding in Sweden. As she said of her own life, “They've taken everything from me … my innocence, my youth, now my freedom.” See Weaver, M.A., “A Fugitive from Injustice,” The New Yorker, 70 (1989): At 60. Much of the Western reflection on the Rushdie and Nasrin affairs betrayed a note of cultural superiority. We admonished fundamentalist Moslems because they had not entered the golden era of responsible, international citizenship. Amnesty International took up the authors' causes. Protests were lodged by Western governments with Iran and Bangladesh. Some countries threatened to cut off economic assistance. Yet, not that long ago, the power of Christianity was allied to the state for almost 1,000 years, during which time many persons were tortured and killed, put on racks and burned at the stake, for being different or refusing to follow Christianity. We escaped the “medieval and violent darkness” of Christianity, in the words of one commentator, “by depriving Christian religious authorities of political and legal power over the community.” See Dyer, G., “The Secularizing Evolution that Includes Islam,” Chicago Tribune, Mar. 20, 1989, at 13.Google Scholar

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A report of blows exchanged at a news conference at the 50th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights demonstrates just how difficult the process of developing a human rights basis for international and intercultural bioethics will be. A representative of the Sudanese National Islamic Front had just finished an extended interruption of a report on conditions in the Sudan, when he was attacked by a rival group member. In the words of a columnist, this “disorderly exchange at the usually somber commission lifted the thin veneer of decorum over the confrontations between victims and perpetrators….” The most heinous violations of human rights occur in the areas of the world we ignore most. See Brown, B.A., “Human-Rights Abuse is ‘Business as Usual’ in Much of the World,” Chicago Tribune, Apr. 15, 1994, at 19.Google Scholar

Early-sixteenth-century Spanish theologians Francesco de Vitoria and Dominic Suarez both proposed an international law based on the laws and customs of countries (jus gentium) and on laws that transcend individual nations (jus naturale). These ideas were codified by Grotius at that time. Human rights spread more widely with the American Revolution, and most explicitly with the French Revolution's Declaration of Individual and Civil Rights (August 24, 1789). There was tremendous progress during the next two centuries, continuously extending human rights, even into international law.Google Scholar

See Possenti, V., “Human Rights and Human Nature,” Contemporary Philosophy, 17 (1995): 4–10. Vittorio Possenti distinguishes two traditions in human rights, the secular and the religious, the latter deriving human rights from a law built into human nature by a Creator God. Thus Thomas Aquinas, in the latter tradition, can derive human rights from inclinations of human nature—persistence in being, union between man and woman, generation and education of children, social character of human nature, and the desire for the truth. From these he argues for fundamental human rights respectively to life, to have a family, to procreate and educate one's children, to have a place in society and a useful job, and to develop one's own intelligence in a search for truth. See Aquinas, , de lege, in his Summa Theologiae, 1,2ae, QQ 93–105.Google Scholar

Evolutionary biology is the notion that the specific nature of, for instance, a horse or a human being evolves and changes over eons.Google Scholar

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See Anonymous, “China: BBC Wrong About Inmate Organs,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 24, 1994, at 28. In this wire service story, Chinese officials said that the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) documentary on use of prisoners' organs was fabricated. The BBC claimed that 90 percent of executed criminals are organ donors, while the Chinese said that they are rarely donors, and only with prisoners' or their relatives' consent.Google Scholar

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Other strategies included birth control pills, intrauterine devices, and the like. About 90 million children are born each year, contributing to urgency.Google Scholar

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Regarding efforts to reach a compromise with the Vatican on reproductive statements at the Egyptian conference, U.S. Vice President Al Gore remarked that there likely would never be “full agreement [with the Vatican] on contraception and the American woman's right to choose.” Rowley, S.M., “U.S., Vatican Seeking Compromise on Abortion,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 7, 1994, at 1, 12. Although the Vatican recognizes the difficulties women have carrying a child to term, it emphasizes counseling, free medical care, social support, and adoption. About women's challenges today, the Vatican says, “Such difficulties do not warrant the violation of the right to life.” Id. at 12.Google Scholar

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Ironically, within scientifically based civilizations, there is an increasing rapprochement between science and religion. See Somerville, M., “Genetics, Reproductive Technologies, Euthanasia, and the Search for a New Social Paradigm,” Social Science and Medicine, 42 (1996): Ix–xii.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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This commercialization extends to animal body parts. A good example is Baxter Healthcare Corporation's alliance with a biotechnology company to produce pigs with hearts and other organs that can be readily transplanted into human beings. DNX Corporation, the partner, has already used pig livers to filter the blood of human patients with terminal liver disease, and has bioengineered pigs with human hemoglobin as part of their blood. This is now an experimental therapy. After all, if we can eat pigs, and already use their heart valves for transplant, the reasoning goes, why not use them to save lives in other ways as well?Google Scholar

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Cross-species fertilization includes creating human beings using cow eggs and the like. Pigs and cows have already been created with human immunosystems. The creation of research embryos has not been ruled out in the United States, nor has human cloning, although these have been condemned by political leaders and other countries. See Neikirk, W., “Senate Opts Not to Vote on Proposed Cloning Ban,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 12, 1998, at 4; and Beck, J., “Cloning is Not the Path to Immortality,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 15, 1998, at 23.Google Scholar

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See, for example, how Anthony Powell developed this idea in his writings. See Treglown, J., “Class Act,” The New Yorker, Dec. 18. 1995, 108–11, esp. 110.Google Scholar

That is, as Jacques Derrida argues, the opposite of “what is” is not “what is not,” but rather the difference itself. This approach keeps the individual rooted in circumstances, family, society, and culture. See Derrida, J., “Differences,” in his The Margins of Philosophy, trans. by Bass, A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982): 1–27.Google Scholar

Derrida goes on to note that, by emphasizing difference, one deconstructs all efforts of establishing a kingdom. In his thinking, there can be no capital letters, not even I. No one perspective, for instance, autonomy, could govern our ethics. Rather the individual would be defined by his/her cultural context. In the post-modern view, even being as Is-ness is simply a choice. Being's privileged place does not rest on some objective truth, but on a choice to emphasize being over nonbeing. Applying that to Western emphasis on the individual, autonomy is not a side constraint of all ethics, but simply a choice to overemphasize human difference to the exclusion of our immanent ties to all things that are.Google Scholar

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A brief note about traditional Chinese xenophobia bears on this point. Chinese xenophobia is so entrenched that the story is told of the 200-year-old diplomatic failure of the British mission there. The British Crown sent Lord George McCartney to Peking in 1792 to exchange ambassadors and to improve how the Chinese were treating British merchants. McCartney was accompanied by huge warships and a retinue of 100. Yet the Emperor of the Ming dynasty treated the British as vassals, as he would Mongolians and Tibetans, and the gifts they brought as tribute. When McCartney arrived in Peking, according to Alain Peyrefitte, as a representative of King George III, he was herded together with many other subordinates to bring tribute for the Emperor's birthday! The British simply did not understand the degree to which the Chinese regarded their empire as the center of the world (even though by then it had become quite poor and backward), or the degree to which the Chinese scorned business and businessmen. See generally Peyrefitte, A., The Collision of Two Civilizations (London: Harvill, 1993).Google Scholar

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