John Stonestreet – Page 7

Trust the Science on Life: Guest Column

May 19, 2025John StonestreetAbortionAbortion, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

The slogan “trust the science” has been used for years to push any number of causes, many of them controversial, from Covid policies to transgender medical practices. Used in substitution for making an argument, “trust the science” signals one’s intellectual credibility without having to prove it, preempting debate and shutting down any opposition. After all, how can one argue with Science?

At this point, it should be obvious to us all that those who most loudly repeat the mantra are also most likely to put ideology before science, not the other way around. Consider the policy and corporate profiteering enabled by claiming scientific consensus about human-caused global warming. Now, an increasing number of scientists question that global warming is even happening, much less is human caused. This, despite the extensive way that federal and state policy was reoriented around cutting carbon emissions.

Though scientists do not agree about climate change, it turns out they do (mostly) agree about when life begins. A 2021 survey found 96% of 5,577 biologists surveyed from 1058 academic institutions agree that human life begins at conception. This is the kind of consensus that activists on many other issues would love to have, but don’t. Shouldn’t our laws and public policies reflect this “science,” also? Wouldn’t scientists who agree that life begins at conception be calling for us to “trust the science” and oppose abortion?

No. In this area, when “the biology” collides with the cultural priorities of sexual freedom, there are two common responses. First is deflection, citing something about “women’s rights to their own bodies,” an idea about which the science we are supposed to trust has nothing to say. Second is an assertion that the preborn, while a human life, is not yet a person with moral status or rights.

Of course, in this context, the concept of personhood is utilized with no clear definition. And “the science,” which tells us when life begins, is also of no help here. What scientifically study-able aspect of a human being makes a person “a person”?

Different worldviews offer different answers to this, ranging from birth to self-awareness. And yet, in the end, it tends to be Christians who are accused of imposing their religious, non-scientific views through law by others who are imposing their own religious, non-scientific distinctions between a human being and a person.

The implications of this debate go well beyond abortion. Historically, whenever some humans are defined as non-persons, other humans are defined as non-persons. This is the story of how those with dementia, or Down Syndrome, or any number of other mental or physical conditions have been treated throughout much of history, including in much of the world today. Once the powerful assume the right to define which humans qualify as persons, whether by legal means or more broadly across a culture, the list always tends to be reduced further. This is the slope down which Canada is sliding, where assisted suicide has devolved from a rare option for the terminally ill to standard practice justified for almost any reason.

The essential question to anyone proclaiming, “trust the science,” is What is science? Is it a means, enabled by God’s common grace, for human beings to better understand and redeem a fallen world? Or is it a tool of control?

Science tells us that human life begins at conception. Both natural law and biblical ethics teach that every human life is valuable. The best way forward, then, is to see every human being as having rights that should be protected, from the beginning of life to natural death. This is an area in which we should definitely “follow the science.”

We’ve Seen the Dire Wolf Movie and it Doesn’t End Well: Guest Column

May 13, 2025John StonestreetEthicsBioethics, Ethics, Medical Ethics

Recently, TIME magazine announced that the biotechnology company Colossal has resurrected the dire wolf, a species that went extinct thousands of years ago. “This is Remus,” read the caption over a photo of a robust-looking white wolf. “He’s a dire wolf. The first to exist in over 10,000 years.” According to Colossal, this is a first step to resurrecting other long-extinct animals, like the woolly mammoth.

As it turns out, the headline is an exaggeration. Remus, his brother Romulus, and their sister Khaleesi contain no DNA from the dire wolf. Rather, they are modern gray wolves with genes tweaked by the company to mirror the DNA of the dire wolf. And they were more than likely engineered to look like the fictional giant wolves from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

The most common comment on the TIME story was some variation of the sentiment, “I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well.” Most people likely had in mind Jurassic Park, in which a company uses genetic technology to bring back dinosaurs. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t end well. In fact, the seventh installment of the franchise will release this summer, each containing the same message as the 1993 original: Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.

Dozens of movies reflect the dangers of genetic tinkering, human reengineering, and other forms of scientific hubris. From The Island of Dr. Moreau to Gattaca to Planet of the Apes to The Island, not to mention about half of all zombie movies ever made, we’ve been thoroughly warned about the illusion of human control over nature.

Maybe this is just the story of directors sprucing up a plot, or perhaps a surprising amount of wisdom in the arts has been overlooked or ignored by scientists and tech pioneers. A popular meme from Twitter quotes an imaginary science fiction author saying, “In my book, I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale,” immediately followed by a tech company exec announcing: “At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.” Even more, there is a strange disconnect between pop culture’s ability to anticipate the negative consequences of our scientific advances and our overall willingness to volunteer as guinea pigs.

This is as true for Artificial Intelligence as for medical technology. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to A.I. to Terminator to I, Robot, to Avengers: Age of Ultron, we’ve been warned about AI. Wall-E warned how we’d lose our humanity if we relied on technology to solve all our problems. Ready Player One warned against getting lost in virtual reality. Children of Men depicted what would happen if society stopped having enough babies. Minority Report questioned the justice of a surveillance state.

What all these movies have in common is that their warning has been ignored in the real world. People will jokingly say, “I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well,” but we continue to adopt every new technology that promises comfort, convenience, and control without a serious discussion about purpose or boundaries.

Even when the warnings aren’t exactly accurate or even realistic, these films often raise questions worth asking. And yet, our curiosity wanes once the credits roll. As in the Terminator movies, artificial intelligence continues to gobble up vast areas of life and human creativity without much protest. And despite all the Jurassic Park references, Colossal’s wolves will likely be the first of many bioengineering projects that prioritize profit and publicity over the welfare of animals or humans.

You won’t hear me say this often, but it’s time to pay closer attention to Hollywood. Despite the garbage that comes from the entertainment industry, there’s a willingness to question “progress” that is lacking at MIT, medical labs, and Silicon Valley.

C.S. Lewis wrote that reason is the organ of understanding, and imagination is the organ of meaning. We need both, which is why we should listen when someone asks, even in film, “What could go wrong?” Asking whether we should do something is a skill that should not be extinct.

Guest Column: The Abortion Pill Harms Women

May 8, 2025John StonestreetAbortionAbortion, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

Last week, Amna Nawaz of PBS News asked Dr. Marty Makary, new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, if he planned to impose restrictions on the distribution and use of mifepristone and misoprostol in chemical abortions. The FDA approved mifepristone for chemical abortions in 2000, after a selective, limited study determined that it was “safe and effective.” Since 2016, citing that conclusion, the FDA eroded all safeguards on chemical abortions. Today, chemical abortions can be prescribed in every state, without an in-person visit, by someone who is not a physician, and distributed through the mail. Women self-administer the abortion drugs at home without a required follow-up visit. Clinics or administrating entities are not required to report adverse effects.

Even so, Dr. Makary said that he “ha(d) no plans to take action on mifepristone,” but then added:

I believe as a scientist, you got to evolve as the data comes in.

And, as you may know, there is an ongoing set of data that is coming into FDA on mifepristone. So, if the data suggests something or tells us that there’s a real signal, then I — we can’t promise we’re not going to act on that data that we have not yet seen.

Almost on cue, a new report was released on Monday by the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Whereas the FDA originally relied on data from 10 clinical trials with nearly 31,000 participants, the new data is based on the “largest-known study of the abortion pill” and “is based on analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database that includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023.” In other words, this data is the most recent available and is far more representative of the chemical abortions typically obtained today. The women in this dataset are,

[B]roadly representative of the women who obtain mifepristone abortions in the U.S.; they are not a prescreened group of generally healthy women recruited into various clinical trials conducted at different times around the world.

Also, the medical care these women received is common to chemical abortions and not “the carefully controlled regimen of care that ordinarily prevails in clinical trials.”

The results, according to this analysis, is that the abortion pill harms women. Some of the disturbing findings found that 10.93% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. The real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of “less than 0.5%” in clinical trials reported on the drug label.

Of course, even if the new study suggested that mifepristone is “safe and effective” for women, it would still be a dangerous lie to claim, as proponents have, that it is “like Tylenol.” As Ob-Gyn physician Dr. Christine Francis argued in a What Would You Say video, having an abortion is nothing like treating a headache. When Tylenol works, pain is eliminated. When mifepristone works, a developing human life in the womb is ended. “If the medication is successful,” Francis observed, “someone always dies. That is the furthest thing from safe.”

Even more, women are not sufficiently warned that they are, to put it gently, likely to see the result of their chemical abortion. What the EPPC study does not quantify is the emotional and psychological trauma that women have experienced.

Also, like the data used by the FDA to justify its systemic reduction of all restrictions on mifepristone, the comparison with Tylenol is misleading and false. The claim is based on the total number of hospitalizations of each, but that comparison is “terribly misleading” since so many more people take Tylenol than mifepristone. When compared on a per capita basis, there is no comparison.

In the interview with PBS News, Dr. Makary called himself “a data guy.” I believe that he is. At the very least, these data findings require a reexamination of the FDA’s current regulations and protocol on chemical abortions. The Ethics and Public Policy Center further recommends:

The FDA should reinstate the original patient safety protocols that were required when mifepristone was first approved. Doing so will likely reduce the harms to women and permit better monitoring to determine whether this drug should remain on the market.

Certainly, it should not remain on the market. But this study is incredibly important to reverse some of the damage the FDA has caused. The stakes could not be higher. Today, the vast majority of chemical abortions “are performed using a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol,” and “chemical abortions now account for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.” Fifteen years ago, the world learned that the mass-murdering abortionist Kermit Gosnell had been enabled by a severe lack of oversight and regulation. This new report from the EPPC suggests that chemical abortion is its own “house of horrors.”