CORRESPONDENCE.

Objectively Wrong

I'm very glad reviewer Mary Midgely liked my Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate [May 21]. But I should draw attention to a mistake-or perhaps it's a recurrent typo-in the review. The founder of pragmatism was Charles Sanders Peirce (with an "ei," pronounced "Purse"), not Pierce.

Susan Haack

Coral Gables, Fla.

Dubious research

I was both intrigued by and appreciative of Daniel Callahan's article ["Scientific Research," May 21] suggesting a need for skepticism about current medical research. Still, I have a significant disagreement with him having to do with fetal brain cellular implantation when he says that a particular treatment for Parkinson's disease shows a "fair promise of working." Nothing could be further from the truth. He is referring to a formal brain operation requiring the stereotaxic introduction and depositing of a small fetal brain graft in a precise location in the depths of the patient's brain. As a neurosurgeon, I am totally unimpressed by the clinical results from this invasive surgical methodology. What little symptomatic improvement has been reported in a very small group of patients is simply the result of an injury artifact caused by the instrument, a thin cannula used for placing the transplant, causing damage to the brain tissue. (This is the exact region where a destructive legion is created to reduce the symptoms of this tragic neurodegenerative disease.)

This operative procedure is immoral for two reasons. First, it utilizes living fetal brain tissue (requiring six to eight fetuses to gain sufficient cerebral material for grafting), and second, the operation itself is without scientific justification-it is simply a bad operation.

If all that were not bad enough, there is now a NRH protocol requiring that a control group be created within the framework of this type of surgery in which the patients have burr holes (small openings) placed into their skulls, even though they will not undergo the complete operation (the intracerebral placement of the brain transplant) until some future time. These of course are not totally safe undertakings. This has been referred to as sham or placebo surgery; one more serious moral dilemma.

Callahan's overall critique of contemporary medical research in this country can be amplified. He is perfectly right that we overestimate and overpublicize this work and often promise miracles that will never come to pass. More importantly, biotechnology has lost its moral compass in its attempt to redesign the human existence.

Robert J. White, M.D.

Cleveland, Ohio

The writer is professor of neurological surgery in the School of Medicine, Case Western University.

The author replies:

Dr. White may well be correct that the research on the use of fetal tissue to treat Parkinson's disease did not prove as much as some of the journalistic accounts-or the hopes of the researchers-seemed to suggest. I am not competent to judge the science.

But if the research has not achieved any significant results so far, it is certain that further research will be undertaken to improve the outcome. What will Dr. White say if, some day, the research is finally successful? The public, science, and the media will surely be thrilled. A way to deal with a terrible disease, Parkinson's, will have been found.

Is Dr. White prepared to say that, even if it works, it would be wrong- and better that people continue suffering from Parkinson's than that an immoral use be made of fetal tissue? I think I might now and then be prepared to say that, but I doubt that most people in our society would, and surely not most of those with the disease. I am troubled to be saying that, but it seems to me reasonably accurate.

The trouble with the research imperative is that it makes skeptics like myself look cold and indifferent; we uphold high principle while our fellow creatures suffer. I can't feel too good about that, even if that is the way I think I must go. daniel callahan

Problems of pacifism 

I found the discussions of "pacifism and genocide" in the issue of June 18 very interesting but my own concerns were not fully dealt with. My questions are more personal than philosophical or theological. Despite my pacifist leanings, I want to know how one can look into the eyes of a young Albanian Kosovar and say, "I did not defend you or give you arms because I do not believe in killing." How does one face a Holocaust survivor and argue that "war is not an appropriate response"? What other than war or revolution could have stopped a Hitler or a Pol Pot or an ethnic rampage? I may sacrifice myself, even my family, but how can I sacrifice others who do not believe as I do?

Much of the antiwar discussion addresses what should have been done to avoid the Kosovo situation, or points out how military action failed to stop the killing or even accelerated it. I have yet to check out the books authored by your contributors, but I have not seen any war critic deal adequately with the facts on the ground in terms that could serve in a dialogue with the victims. All that having been said, I try to maintain my pacifist inclination. Thank you for the discussion.

Paul Gerard Marx

Shawnee Mission, Kans.

Ignoring the rule of law

In his essay, "Is NATO's War Just?" [May 21], Bruce Russett asks whether approval of the United Nations Security Council should be required to authorize a NATO military campaign. The question is posed in the context of the unwillingness of China and Russia to permit the Security Council to do so in the case of Serbian aggression in Kosovo.

There exists a standard of international law meant to regulate all nation-states, founded on the charter of the United Nations and successive resolutions, as well as judgments of the World Court. The threat or use of force is prohibited if not expressly sanctioned by the Security Council, subsequent to its judgment that peaceful methods have been ineffective, or in self-defense against "armed attack" until the Security Council takes action. The NATO states thus set aside consultative procedures the UN offers for settlement of international disputes.

An exception has been made for "humanitarian intervention" in any number of situations, and NATO claimed this right in Kosovo. Yet the stated humanitarian motive for intervention did not exonerate NATO from finding a viable settlement. The Rambouillet Accords failed to do so. A negotiation that attempted to force a solution by threat of a bombing campaign if Slobodan Milosevic did not accept the demands of Western leaders aggravated the situation in Kosovo. Rambouilllet was offered to the Kosovo Liberation Army as a means to concentrate NATO's military power on Serbia, and it led Milosevic to intensify reprisals against the KLA even before the war began. The subsequent NATO bombings vitiated the already precarious foundation of international law.

Kenneth Keulman

New Orleans, La.

The writer is professor of ethics at Loyola University in New Orleans.

'Romanitas' vs. the gospel

I confess genuine discouragement over the response from the Rev. Kevin Rhoades [Correspondence, July 16] to your editorial of April 23 on the New York Times article describing the seminarians at Mount Saint Mary's, and to the earlier letters on the same topic.

While Father Rhoades attempts to rebut the charge of growing clericalism, it is frightening that while he cites Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, mentions Vatican II, praises devotion to the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and defends the wearing of clerical attire, he makes reference only once, in passing, to Jesus Christ.

When I was ordained thirty years ago, the ritual called me to become an alter Christus, and I thought that's what we're all about. I grow increasingly discouraged as I watch service to the gospel of Jesus Christ being completely replaced by fidelity to Rome. Something is terribly wrong.

(Monsignor) Henry A. Kriegel

La Quinta, Calif.

Shake on it

I couldn't agree more with Mary Margaret Carberry [July 16, "The Wages of Change"] that too much change in too little time can be overwhelming. But to assume that there is a monolithic "Catholic culture" that somehow embraces all Catholics-from cradle to convert, from European to African, from five to ninety-five-and that needs to be protected from steady and sometimes rapid change, is too facile. The best way to maintain a Catholic identity is to ensure that it is inclusive of all Catholics.

Far too often, the call for the "gradual change" that Carberry lauds is used to exclude those who do not fit into the so-called "traditional Catholic culture," whether they are the divorced and remarried, the gay and lesbian, or the convert who was not drawn to the pre-Vatican II church but rather to the more open and accepting-of-diversity postconciliar church that looks at multiculturalism as a truer manifestation of the gospel. The church's "centuries-old" culture that Carberry treasures is, in fact, only a few hundred years old. The church's true tradition has abundant room for all, whether we worship with tom-toms or well-worn Catholic hymns.

Satisfaction with our own Catholic culture is only possible if it is grounded in the gospel, where there is room for a kiss of peace celebrated with a simple handshake, a bear hug, or a high five.

Ellen Robinson-Haynes

Fair Oaks, Calif.

Why Christ came

Reader George Ward asks [Correspondence, June 4], What does the pope's recent statement about evolution do to the traditional view of salvation history? Nothing much, I say; or nothing at all.

First: Long before Vatican II (or even Teilhard de Chardin), I was taught, in grammar school catechism no less, that the "clay of the ground" of Genesis 2:7 is not to be taken literally as inorganic material but could represent a lower form of life, say a primate or even a hominid. Revelation is not about how God created humans, but that God did so.

Second: Evolution from a single-cell form of life ("from the bottom") in no way precludes a later relapse resulting from Adam's sin; just as a soaring rise of the Dow Jones average does not preclude an eventual crash.

Finally, although many, including Thomas Aquinas, held that Christ would not have come had Adam not sinned, there is a respectable body of opinion holding that the Son would have become incarnate anyway. This dates back at least to Aquinas's Franciscan contemporary, Saint Bonaventure. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#280) at least implies the same conclusion: "...[T]he mystery of Christ...reveals the end for which 'in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth': from the beginning, God envisaged the glory of the new creation in Christ."

Thus, it is perfectly in keeping with tradition to believe that the Incarnation was not just a kind of "Plan B," an emergency patch-up; rather, it was the original purpose of the very act of creation. Without denying the truths of conceptualizing Christ's mission as teaching, redeeming, etc., his fundamental and ultimate mission was and is the unique and perfect self-communication of God in and to and through God's creation.

Edmund F. Kal, M.D., S.T.B.

Fresno, Calif.