Microscopic Americans?

Julian Sanchez | October 4, 2004

Occasional Reason contributor Todd Seavey's response to National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru on stem cells strikes me as pretty much dead on. I've debated Ramesh on this very issue before, and the conclusion I've come to is that he manages to construct (as he always insists) an entirely secular argument against stem cell research precisely by removing from the religious argument the reference to God that would render it, if not convincing to nonbelievers, then at least intelligible. As a result, he ends up with an argument that is, in a sense, too materialist, in that it makes "personhood" consist, not in having a particular sort of mind, but on having the right sequence of proteins in your DNA.