Appendix G. 
263 
related requirements, sets limits on what can be 
experienced and valued, ensuring a great deal of 
overlap. (Nussbaum, 1995, 76) 
Nussbaum’s work both in identifying the judgments that 
underwrite compassion and in tying an account of rights to human 
function and capabilities that are presumably universal highlights 
what is at stake, not merely with stem cell research but with a 
growing list of biotechnological developments which appear to 
destabilize the concept of human nature and which require that we 
think carefully and hard about what it might mean for some humans 
to have access to these technologies while other humans do not.'^ At 
the very least, the combination of what Rabinow describes as the 
biologicalization of identity around genetics rather than gender and 
race with the possibility of manipulating that genetic identity for 
those with the money or power to do so does not bode well for 
securing wide-spread compassion across economic or technological 
divides. Even more important, however, is the recognition that the 
very notion of human rights may ultimately rest on the idea (and 
what, until recently has always been the reality) of a natural human 
condition that is relatively stable. 
I believe that Nussbaum is correct when she claims that 
inquiring into characteristic human activities and comparing these to 
non-human activities helps us to define limits and thereby to 
promote human flourishing. Unfortunately, what Susan Squier calls 
the “pluripotent rhetoric” of stem cell research is that of limitless 
possibilities (Squier, Liminal Lives) . The ultimate limit, of course, is 
death and yet even this limit appears illusory in some visions of our 
biotech future. 
It is worth noting in closing that William Safire’s New Year’s 
Day column at the dawn of the twenty-first century, in January 2000, 
was entitled “Why Die?” The longing behind this question is neither 
new nor unfamiliar. What is new is that this longing to escape the 
vulnerabilities and limitations of the body is united with a technology 
that holds out the prospect of fundamentally changing that body. 
Yet, I agree with Gerald McKenny that we need to ask whether we 
wish to accept and promote a view of bodily vulnerability as merely 
an obstacle to human flourishing, which ought to be overcome at any 
cost (McKenny, 1998, 223). 
Although a longing for invulnerability is perhaps a 
quintessentially human trait, and although the quest to reduce the 
human suffering wrought by illness and disease is morally 
admirable, there is no mistaking the hubris behind the question, Why 
Die? Opponents of stem cell research have, from the start, argued 
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