Who Is The Real Subject Of Human Equality? Feat. Charlie Camosy
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Today we have a discussion that is a little bit deeper than what we often do on Live in the Brain. We do talk policy sometimes, we talk sports, we talk culture, we do all those things. We have someone today who's been one of my favorite guests over the years, and he's got a brand new book that I think will spark really important discussions, or at least I hope it will. I think he feels the same way. Professor Charlie Comosi joins us. He is a noted bioethicist and theologian. He teaches theology at Fordham University. He's a

Father and Husband. I think those are probably his favorite titles. He's authored six books. Today, we're going to talk about the newest one called Losing Our Dignity, How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality. Charlie, great to have you. Hello, Shannon. Good to see you.

So this book is fascinating because as we were chatting about, it gets to deep subject matter, but it's very readable. You include stories. People will know some of these. You personalize them. But the broader discussion is about where we've gotten to

as far as valuing life, whether you're talking about abortion and pregnancy, whether you're talking about dementia or disabled and making judgments about people's quality of life and whether they're worthy of medical treatments and resources. You highlighted this during COVID-19 too, people who, their lives were sort of a calculation about who we value and who we save. It is a fascinating book. Tell me about what you hope to accomplish.

Well, I've talked about these issues before, and I guess the common theme that I see running throughout them is we're kind of at a crisis point about who we are. Who counts as the we when we say we? Who's included in that? Who's, you know, a subject of fundamental human equality, as the title says? Is it about how rational we are, how self-aware we are, how autonomous we are, how productive we are?

We are. I utterly reject that, especially as a Christian theologian. I want to say what makes us all equal, what makes us we, is that we share a common nature made in the divine image, made in our Creator's image. It isn't about what we can do, it's about who we are. And as we've lost that as a culture, as we've become in many places a post-Christian culture, in the places you and I tend to hang out, we are a post-Christian culture.

New York and DC. We've lost that. And as a result, there's, I mean, human populations are dropping like flies in terms of who counts as us. We've already decided that people who are brain dead don't count as us. People who have, who are in a so-called persistent vegetative state, vegetative state. I mean, the term is so offensive all by itself. We aren't vegetables. No human being is vegetable prenatal children and abortion. You mentioned an even late stage dementia. I think we're getting there. So the book is an attempt to kind of sound the cultural alarm and say, Hey,

whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Now that we're reaching this post-Christian culture, especially in the halls of power and medicine and policy, we need to really see where we're going here. And where we're going isn't a very good place. Well, and you touch on the fact that in the Western world, so much of what

the foundation that was laid for medical institutions and research and caregiving areas, those were done by, in many cases, religious entities or orders. And they were a big foundation of healthcare here in the Western world.

And yet, you know that medicine has become more and more secularized where we are making these calculations about how much will this drug cost me to save this life? Is this life worth saving when you make those calculations? So when you start to take humanity away from medical decisions and make them more of an economic on paper decision, we do get away from life. And the fact that every single life, if you and I who share this faith and others believe that it is in the image of God, that it's worthy of fighting for.

Yeah, it's so interesting. When I poured into the history of this, I try to teach my medical ethics students this too. The idea that we would separate medicine from religion and faith is a totally new concept in Western culture. It was almost always... In fact, if you go back far enough, it was the religious figure and the healthcare figure were often the same person, right?

My next book is on nursing ethics. I'm realizing about all the Catholic nuns who are the progenitors of our nursing institutions, especially in the United States and in Europe. But what happened, and this is a very quick story I need to tell because it's just so dramatic. If you want to tell a story where it all changed, I think you have to go back to 1968 in Harvard Medical School because what happened there, there was this Harvard Brain Death Commission, which was put together.

It was just the case that the ventilator had been invented and organ transplantation had just been invented too. And so there were these people who were so-called brain dead, right, who'd been saved by ventilators. And then we were looking around for organs for organ transplant and the Harvard Brain Death Committee said, you know what?

These people who have homeostasis and are fighting off infections and who can even gestate children in certain circumstances, we're going to call them dead and we're going to take their organs because we make this distinction between the human being and the person. It was no longer sharing a common nature for them anyway that reflected the image and likeness of God. It was things again like rationality, self-awareness, productivity, etc.,

And Peter Singer, who is a philosopher I really disagree with and wrote a book about, but who I respect a lot, who's consistent on the other side of this, says this is where things all really change. We abandoned the theological principle and said, well, it's not human nature, certainly created in the image and likeness of God that matters. It's these other things that matter, like rationality, self-awareness, productivity. And it changed there. And we've seen the result of that over the last four or five decades. Yeah.

Well, and that gets to this concept too of you mentioned what Singer often focuses on, but also this idea of consciousness, this idea of a human being being aware of what it is, of making decisions. But then where do we go with infants and newborns and six-month-olds and 12-month-olds? I mean, where do we draw the line about where a life is a life that has value in the world of someone like Singer?

Yeah, again, I have a grudging admiration for him because he's willing to follow the principle that so many other people, again, in the I-95 corridor hold about abortion, for instance. But he goes all the way to infanticide. He says, listen, if it's self-awareness and rationality that makes us us, that's the we, that doesn't happen until well after birth. And the ancients knew this. I mean, the ancient Greeks and Romans believed in abortion. They also believed in infanticide for the same reason.

And it's so interesting. I go into this in some detail in my work, how the earliest Christians rebelled against both and said, hey, we're against abortion and infanticide for the same reason, because this is a fellow member of our human family whose image bears the image and likeness of our creator. Now, you can go beyond that and say, and Singer does, and I go into the book on this and say, well, what other kinds of human beings don't have rationality and self-awareness, right? And one of the things I...

finish with in the last couple of chapters in the book is what I think is the next shoe to drop in the rejection of fundamental human equality, which is human beings with late stage dementia. So if you have later stage dementia, as many of us know, tragically, many people lose their faculties of rationality and self-awareness.

Now, if it's being human that matters, right, sharing a common human nature, those people matter just the same as any of us, same as you and me. Maybe if you're a Christian, especially, they matter a little more because they're particularly vulnerable and Christ's face is present in them in a special way. But in our current secularized culture, especially medical culture, it isn't the case because they've lost their rationality and self-awareness. Now, we haven't totally applied that view consistently, but it's not clear, and I show in the book, it's not clear that we're not headed there very, very soon.

Yeah.

But Roe v. Wade, you include a lot of facts and a real deep dive on the reasoning of that opinion that I think a lot of people, if they just have a casual awareness of it, don't really understand some of those details. But I thought it was really important in that chapter because, listen, this country is divided over the issue of abortion. Science is advancing. We're learning more about abortion.

and those kinds of things. The courts keep fighting over these things. States keep passing laws. That debate's going to continue. But an important thing that I thought you brought up is if we're really going to be about the value of life, we have to think about the mother too. This woman who finds herself with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy who, you know, you, you,

If you're coming at this from a pro-life perspective, you can't just tell her, well, just keep your baby. You're going to be fine. You'll figure it out. The people who are saying that need to also be the ones who will foster children, who will adopt children, who will take these women in, who will provide for them financially and make sure that they can, if they decide to go through with their pregnancy, provide for this child. And that's a big part of the equation in valuing life as well.

Absolutely. Can I just say from a personal point of view, my wife and I have adopted three children, three siblings, actually, and we couldn't be more delighted about our decision. So if anybody's out there thinking of this as a as part of what it means to give a pro-life witness, I just can't recommend it highly enough. But let me go back to Roe versus Wade, because what's so interesting about what you said, and I get into this quite a bit in the book, as you mentioned earlier.

is that women were an ignored group of people from both people that supported Roe and those who rejected Roe. In fact, the opinion, Roe versus Wade, was written largely to support the rights of doctors not to be prosecuted for performing illegal abortions.

And so people know Justice Blackmun, and you may get to this, but like he spent so much of his legal career before he got to the Supreme Court, specifically dealing with that issue of making sure doctors had legal protections in the medical setting.

Yes. And he actually spent his summer before authoring the opinion at the Mayo Clinic, diving into their library, looking from a, especially from a healthcare provider's perspective on these questions, not from a woman's perspective on these questions. In fact, now that we have another major abortion case coming up next year, I wonder how the justices are going to spend this summer and what they're going to be researching and what they're going to be looking at. It'd be very fascinating to know that.

But but so women, unfortunately, and actually Justice Ginsburg pointed this out in a lot of her public discussion about abortion. She said, you know, Roe is not a good case for women. It's it doesn't have a lot about it. It's focused on autonomy and freedom and people like taking control of their lives, which isn't, as you mentioned, the context for a lot of abortions where women feel incredibly vulnerable, not empowered, not able to make choices.

And so, yes, it's just so fascinating. And I'll add this to it. There was a horrific history. We have a horrific history of especially in the early part of the 20th century.

but went on through Roe versus Wade, of thinking in ways, again, that reject fundamental human equality, that focus on how productive people are, their abilities to achieve rather than, again, who they are as fellow image bearers. And that translated into a lot of eugenic thought and racist eugenic thought.

that people like Dr. Alan Guttmacher clearly expounded on as part of his support for legalized abortion. So a lot of the way that the debate comes to us today, and as you know, I get frustrated with the way it comes to us today on many levels,

um, doesn't reflect the actual history of how we got here. It often came as a result again of protecting doctors and racist eugenics. Well, and you know, we have talked about this many times. You're not coming at this from a GOP super conservative pro-life viewpoint. Um, that's not where you personally identify, but you are personally, um,

identify as the value of life. For you, it's not a political issue and certainly not somebody who would say that you vote GOP and that's what your issue is about. For you as an ethicist and theologian, this is separate from politics and it's a different consideration. We'll have more of this interview coming up.

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The good thing is in the book, you do outline where we are in some important cases, but you talk about how we move forward too, for those who truly are going to value life and whether it's being able to care for that woman with an unplanned pregnancy or older relatives with dementia or children who need to be taken in and foster care adoption, you say, well,

We need to make, as people of faith, better decisions about how we invest and spend our time, our treasure, those kinds of things, so that we're in a position to be caregivers and to reach out to those most in need, which we're called to do. I wanted to read something that you have in Chapter 7, talking about reversing course with this dehumanizing society. You said...

We would do well, therefore, to live our lives as signs of contradiction in a culture whose idol is buying and selling and to resist the idea that your value comes from the things that you consume or create. And I think, gosh, that should be very convicting to those of us who say we're about life and we're about helping people in all stages of life in different situations. How much are we willing to sacrifice and make decisions that will leave us room to help and care for people who desperately need it?

And I know you make a good chunk of your living covering national politics, but I do have to say that part of my frustration with especially Christians and pro-life Christians who don't do this is that we've made an idol, I think, of just kind of like obsessing over national politics and following what's coming in the next news cycle or what the next scroll on Twitter guilty of will show us, right? And by guilty, I mean, say I'm guilty.

It can be all consuming. And, and for, I think a lot of people too, they get into like the team, like is my team or my tribe going to win on this particular issue versus do we care about other people's lives and value them? As you said, like, you know, if you believe that they're in the image of God as fellow image bearers and people who every single person has value, whether you vehemently disagree with them, whether you're on the same page, whether you're not, it shouldn't be about scoring wins as much as it should be valuing life and fighting for that.

And as you know, I try to work on common ground across difference. And this is, and especially with dementia, this is actually something that can cross political boundaries. I've found over the last, since the beginning of the pandemic, actually very little right left debate about, um,

Should we improve care in nursing homes, right? Should we allow, for instance, horrific stories to take place like the one during the last winter, I think, where someone with dementia was not noticed as they went outside and froze to death outside. And making these kinds of changes, making a fundamental shift from what I call a throwaway culture, what Pope Francis actually calls a throwaway culture, to a culture of encounter and hospitality, right?

there is no really right left. I mean, maybe about whether how extensively the government program should be or a government program should be. How you fund it, maybe. How you fund it, that sort of thing. But when it comes to orienting our lives, right, to say, let's orient our lives in ways which actually reflect the belief that these people are equal to us, right? If we really believe in fundamental human equality,

we're not going to countenance way stations of death that we currently call nursing homes, right? Where people are abandoned to die alone. We're going to work hard to make sure that we have a culture of encounter and hospitality to welcome them as equals and to care for them as equals. And that sort of personal commitment we have and familial commitment and community level commitment is something that isn't a right left debate.

It shouldn't be political. I mean, when we're talking about life now, you and I do come at these things from a place of faith. A lot of people don't. So I don't know. There are the arguments are going to hit them differently or the conversation is going to hit them differently. But you say in that chapter seven, two as well, this stuck out to me where you talk about you shouldn't be ashamed to make an argument from a place of faith.

You say, can we stop being embarrassed about our religious beliefs in public contexts and respectfully but firmly request an equal seat at the table of dialogue? Can we look for overlapping consensus but refuse to translate our views using someone else's moral language into a milquetoast version of what we actually believe in our hearts? Now is not the time to be arrogant and dismissive, but it is also not a time to be hesitant and timid.

Because if you and I really believe that these people are among the most vulnerable, and like you said, there's such an emphasis on the book on thinking about dementia. And so many of us may end up there one day. People that we love, maybe they're already or have gone through this. I've seen this in my family. I'm sure you have too. You won't be at the point of being able to advocate for yourself at that point. And that's why we have to have these dialogues and conversations now and not be ashamed that for some of us, it is motivated by our faith.

Yeah. And that's a major theme of the book is the secularization of medicine in our broader culture in some ways has pushed a lot of people who are religious outside of the conversation. If you want to bring your religion into it, they say you don't belong in the conversation. But there's a very basic philosophical point in the book, and it really is basic, which is there is no view from nowhere.

No one has a completely unbiased view. They all have first principles on which they base their broader views. And so there really is no reason to distinguish between, say, a secular utilitarian and an evangelical who has a gospel-centered approach. There is none. We all bring first principles. That's what human reasoning, that's what human nature does. We all have first principles that we bring to this.

And given the stakes, Shannon, given what's at stake here, given the groups we've already lost, and hopefully we'll get back into the circle of fundamental equality, and given what's at stake, especially with dementia, we may lose another population. We can't be timid. We need to demand respectfully, but clearly and firmly demand a seat at the table. And it's time to stop being embarrassed. It's time to stop being embarrassed. Yeah.

Well, like you said, everybody comes from somewhere. And if it's not a religious faith, maybe your faith is in your own self-determination or something else. But all of us are going to be tested at some point. And like you said, we all bring a bias to the table. So let's just get them all there and have the conversation. Okay, so...

what we can do short term. You also talk about long term that a number of faith-based groups exist now or may come into existence will have to step up in some of these cases. What does that look like to you? What would you hope they accomplish? Well,

Well, again, I like to go back to the history of our faith in many contexts as inspiration. So a good chunk of historians who are my colleagues in theology say the reason why the early Christians went from this persecuted sect that was thrown to the lions in some cases to being welcomed and part of the Roman culture was how Christians responded to

to things like pandemics, to things like other huge medical emergencies where a lot of other folks would run away, where the Christians ran towards the vulnerable people. They oriented their lives towards the people even when they were put in immense danger.

I'm not proud of how a lot of Christians, including my own fellow Catholics, have responded to the pandemic, but maybe we could do better when it comes to this crisis, this dementia crisis. And I think it could be, I know it could be actually, a hugely effective evangelical tool. That wouldn't be the reason to do it. The reason to do it would be to help people that need help. But another part of it would be like people looking around and see how these Christians love one another, right? How they...

how they orient their lives towards the most vulnerable even when it's not um popular even when it's extremely dangerous for them even when they have to reject what the world tells them is of value and should be pursued um if we can do that and follow our forebearers in doing that and following the gospel and doing that following jesus and doing that um we should do it period regardless of the consequences but i really think

We're ripe for a religious revival in some regard where so many people, and I see this in my students, I see this in people I meet, maybe you see this in the, in the areas you run in. People are so desperate to kind of find meaning in their lives, you know, to find a connection, to find a reason to get up in the morning. It isn't about buying and selling or advancing themselves on Instagram or something. They really are hungry, especially young people for meaning and relational meaning.

love. They're hungry for love, let's say. And every person that I've met, almost every person I've met who engages in this kind of work feels invigorated by it. It's that paradox of Christian love, right? Where it is burdensome in some ways, but it's also incredibly life-giving as well.

I was reading a quote about something else, but faith-based today, it said, you shouldn't look at it and think, I have to do this. You should look at it and think, I get to do this. And I think that's how we should consider a lot of these issues. Again, the book is Losing Our Dignity, How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality with Professor Charles Camosi.

Again, what I love about this book is it's, it is easy to digest and to understand. It's very informative. It's full of stories that give a lot of personal impact and it's not political. So I hope that people will check it out. Once again, you've written a fabulous book and I look forward to the next one that you've already told us about. It's going to be on nursing. These are important conversations that if you care about life and human dignity, you should get this book and check it out. Charlie, thank you always for making time for us. Great to see you. No, thank you, Shannon. Really enjoyed it.

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