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0310259398_howtochristn.indd 1 2/27/06 11:31:13 AM Books by Joni Eareckson Tada All God’s Children: Ministry with Disabled Persons (with Gene Newman) Barrier-Free Friendships: Bridging the Distance Between You and Friends with Disabilities (with Steve Jensen) Diamonds in the Dust: 366 Sparkling Devotions The God I Love Heaven: Your Real Home Heaven: Devotional Edition Joni The Life and Death Dilemma: Suicide, Euthanasia, Suffering, Mercy More Precious Than Silver: 366 Daily Devotional Readings A Step Further (with Steven Estes) When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty (with Steven Estes) When Is It Right to Die? 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 2 2/27/06 11:31:14 AM joni eareckson tada & nigel m. de s. cameron how to be a christian in a brave new world 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 3 2/27/06 11:31:14 AM How to Be a Chris tian in a Brave New World Copyright © 2006 by Joni Eareckson Tada and Nigel M. de S. Cameron All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan. AER Edition January 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-29730-7 Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tada, Joni Eareckson. How to be a Christian in a brave new world / Joni Eareckson Tada, Nigel M. de S. Cameron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25939-8 ISBN-10: 0-310-25939-8 1. Christian life. 2. Bioethics — Religious aspects — Christianity. 3. Medical ethics — Religious aspects — Christianity. 4. Christian ethics. I. Cameron, Nigel M. de S. II. Title. BV4501.3.T32 2006 241'.6429 — dc22 2005030455 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New Interna- tional Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc. 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 • 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 4 2/27/06 1:38:05 PM To George W. Bush, Forty-third President of the United States, defender of the dignity of human life; with deep respect and in appreciation 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 5 2/27/06 11:31:14 AM 031020755X_relation_fm.qxp 9/8/06 2:21 PM Page 1 This page is intentionally left blank CONTENTS Introduction . 11 PART ONE: THE BRAVE NEW WORLD 1. Starting Out . .19 2. The Brave New World . 27 3. Wonderfully Made. 47 4. The Better Babies Story. 67 PART TWO: DESIGNING OUR BABIES 5. Quality Control . .87 6. Baby Cloning . 101 7. Designer Babies . 121 PART THREE: TREATING PEOPLE LIKE THINGS 8. Human Harvest . 137 9. The Color of Your Genes. 151 10. A New Slavery . 161 11. Faking Life . 173 PART FOUR: SO WHAT CAN WE DO? 12. What Do We Do Now? . 189 13. Questions People Ask . 201 Appendix: Going Deeper — Resources to Live in the Brave New World . 209 Index . 219 About the Publisher . 225 Share Your Thoughts . 226 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 7 2/27/06 11:31:14 AM 031020755X_relation_fm.qxp 9/8/06 2:21 PM Page 1 This page is intentionally left blank As the discoveries of modern science create tremendous hope, they also lay vast ethical minefields. As the genius of science extends the horizons of what we can do, we increasingly confront complex questions about what we should do. We have arrived at that brave new world that seemed so distant in 1932, when Aldous Huxley wrote about human beings created in test tubes in what he called a “hatchery.” GEORGE W. BUSH 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 9 2/27/06 11:31:14 AM 031020755X_relation_fm.qxp 9/8/06 2:21 PM Page 1 This page is intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION A Little Background Joni Eareckson Tada I’ve never been one for high-minded oratory. At the University of Maryland, I’d lean on my elbow in Philosophy 101 and fight off sleep whenever my professor droned in standard lecture-hall monotone. When dissertations became long-winded or delivered in the language of manu- als or big textbooks, my mind would head for the college cafeteria. “Don’t give me the War and Peace version, just answer my ques- tions.” Seriously now, did anybody really care that “I think, therefore I am”? A system of values? Moral absolutes? Wasn’t right just, well . right? Wasn’t wrong as easy to discern as night and day? Whether ethics were situational or rigid was of little use to me. Wasn’t it a fact that in most situations, all you needed to do was apply a little common sense? Like: would it land you in jail? Does it hurt anybody? Would the pope disapprove? I refused to take the time or mental energy to search out answers to really sticky ethical questions. If people smarter than I was couldn’t speak plainly or point me in the right direction, then I walked away thinking no meaningful answer existed. I took the casual approach — I skirted along the edge of an ethical issue only to catch an occasional idea that buzzed or resonated. We do it all the time. If we’re not guilty of a lazy mental atti- tude, maybe we’re just afraid of tough questions. Or frightened of the answers — answers that demand that we change. But somewhere along the line, our thinking begins to shift. For me, it happened after a diving accident left me permanently paralyzed and drowning in despair; after a cancerous tumor ate away my five-year-old niece’s brain; and after a series of strokes tangled my ninety-year-old father in a web of tubes and machines. Somewhere in 11 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 11 2/27/06 11:31:16 AM those family tragedies, my thinking shifted. Ethics were no longer con- fined to classroom discussion; moral judgments now had flesh-and-blood reality. I had to find an honest-to-goodness reason why quadriplegics like me shouldn’t kill themselves . why we shouldn’t “mercifully” cut short my niece’s suffering . and what we should do about all those tubes and machines. Suddenly I was digging for answers. Books on ethics became my nighttime reading companions. Dinnertime conversations spilled into lively debates about right and wrong. Bible studies evolved into late- night wrestling matches, trying to pin the Word of God to every weird medical scenario. What does the Bible say if the agony of a disease is too great to bear? What is the difference between treatment that sustains life and that which does nothing more than delay death? When is it okay to remove the plugs and let your daddy die? I flipped furiously through the Bible until I landed on James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God . and it will be given to him.” I knew I was thin on wisdom; I lacked “the power of judging the soundest course of action based on knowledge and experience.” I also knew, from the Bible, that I could gain an ability to discern. Eventu- ally, after much soul-searching and fact-finding, my family was able to apply God’s wisdom to my father’s and niece’s situation. I also gained a personal wisdom — I began to embrace all the life God wanted to give me, even if it meant living in a wheelchair without use of my hands or legs. That’s when things heated up. I realized I could help other people who were sinking into despair: people with Lou Gehrig’s disease . young men paralyzed from spinal cord injuries and living in nursing homes . and teenagers with cerebral palsy sitting on the sidelines, watch- ing their classmates date and drive cars. I began sharing with them what I’d learned from God’s Word. Before long, I was writing letters to editors and articles for national magazines, asserting that people are not “better off dead than disabled.” I was speaking with politicians and advocates, rallying a coalition to defeat a physician-assisted suicide initiative in my state. I was arguing against the abortion of unborn handicapped infants as a “disability prevention measure.” I was serving on the National Council on Disability under two US presidents, telling 12 INTRODUCTION 0310259398_howtochristn.indd 12 2/27/06 11:31:16 AM legislators that their “fear of disability” should not provide the basis for making social policy. These were deep waters.