Body by Blood

by Patrick Johnston

  My silence has her basking in the admiring gazes of Thomas and Morgan. Morgan sighs lustfully, as if she was experiencing sensual pleasure out of seeing her psycho-quack in action, intellectually spanking her incorrigible husband. Thomas bites his fingernails nervously, as if he doubts the doctor’s presuppositions but hopes it is useful nonetheless in calming my deleterious scruples.

  Her mention of Personhood fanatics makes me think about my sister. How would she answer this challenge? I smirk, recalling a similar conversation I had with her in my younger years. “Is the scientific method reliable, Dr. Devonaire?”

  Dr. Devonaire nods and responds in a smooth, seductive tone. “Of course, Dr. Verity. You know my answer to that.”

  “Can the scientific method prove the scientific method reliable?”

  She opens her mouth to speak, but halts. “Well, uh . . . ”

  She stops again, appearing to be holding her breath.

  Now, I’m the one smiling contentedly. “If the scientific method is necessary to prove something reliable, then the scientific method is itself unreliable. For to use the scientific method to prove the scientific method would be circular reasoning and, therefore, a logical fallacy. See, even the scientific method relies on presuppositions that the scientific method cannot prove, like the immorality of falsifying data. Can the scientific method prove that falsifying data is wrong?”

  Dr. Devonaire stands up and makes her way behind her desk.

  “You say only what is sensed with the five senses is a verifiable fact, but which of your five senses told you that?” Again, silence. “If your theory that only what is sensed with the five senses is factual and reliable, then it does not meet its own criteria for reliability, for your theory cannot be sensed with any of the five senses.”

  “So now you’re a believer in God?” Morgan throws her hands up.

  So predictable. An ad hominem logical fallacy to detract from the bankruptcy of their circular claims. It’s not Morgan’s fault. I taught her how to do that. I’m the expert at smoke and mirrors to keep from facing the truth.

  I close my eyes and lower my head. “I don’t know what I believe, Morgan, but I certainly don’t believe that random chance multiplied by time can result in all, all”—I wave my hands over my head—“all this!” I grab my chest with both hands. “Or this. That’s the greatest leap of faith of all, and contradictory to everything we see in the realm of science.” I turn to Dr. Devonaire, who is typing on her computer. “Science is observation. Has any man in the history of the world ever recorded the observation of life coming into existence from non-life?”

  She purses her lips, continuing to type what I suspect is her summary of our meeting. I have a feeling she’s going to simply relegate me to her heap of non-compliant egomaniacs. “All right, Dr. Verity. You can have your magic genie, but don’t expect me to call it normal or healthy.”

  I smirk at her condescension, and decide to turn the tables on her. “You’re the one with the magic genie.”

  “Oh, really?” She leans back in her wicker chair, her jaw agape, as if she is aghast at my arrogance.

  “You believe all of life came into existence from unintelligent non-life, something neither you nor anyone else has ever observed. And science is observation, remember? Now, Dr. Devonaire, what’s the greater miracle? Life coming from life—something observable every day? Or life coming from non-life? You make a much greater leap of faith than six-day creationists—blind faith at that.”

  “So, you’re just going to throw everything away to try to save your precious clones? All for your newfound love of the Creator?” Morgan’s tone is shrill, louder than necessary, almost painful to my ear. The rising wave of her unpredictable emotional tsunami threatens to transform this enjoyable clash of intellects into a cause for personal offense.

  “I didn’t say that, Morgan. But morality is not like a graying, wrinkled body that you can just throw away when another one suits you better. Objective morality is a presupposition we all make,”—I glance at Dr. Devonaire—“before we perform an experiment,”—I look at Thomas—“before we make ethics suggestions to a presidential panel on the New Body science,”—then my eyes fasten on Morgan’s—“before we decide whether we should butcher our grandchild so as not to be inconvenienced with her handicap. It’s hypocritical not to acknowledge that even the scientific method is only as reliable as it is objectively and inescapably religious.”

  An eerie stillness descends upon us. With Dr. Devonaire’s intellect disarmed, everyone is inclined more to listen than to offer advice. As she turns her eyes and her fingers to her computer, I fetch her attention with a direct personal question. “Do you fear death, Dr. Devonaire?”

  She lifts her eyes from her computer screen with an uncomfortable flinch, as if I’d just poked her in the forehead with a toothpick. “Well, no. I don’t want to die. That would not be a psychologically healthy emotion.”

  She glances at Morgan, and I think I see a glint of anxiety in her eyes, like she’s worried that the conclusion of the conversation would disappoint the one paying the bill. My question was not in their script.

  Perhaps Dr. Devonaire is fearful of me, wondering if my words are intended to preface the unholstering of a weapon or some other threatening act. I should calm her nerves, but decide to let the fear remain, as it is useful to drive my point home.

  “Three times, Dr. Devonaire,”—I raise three fingers—“I have looked death in the eye. I had wealth beyond my wildest dreams, fame and power, the most beautiful wife a man could ever hope for. But when faced with what I thought were my last breaths, my last thoughts, I would have traded it all for one thing. You cannot put it in a test tube and compare it to a placebo in a double-blinded study, but I would have sacrificed everything for just one thing.”

  I let those words hang out there for a moment.

  “What?” she finally asks.

  “Forgiveness.”

  At those words, she concludes the appointment prematurely, hardly directing another word at me, but speaking to Morgan instead, like I’m not even in the room.

  Dr. Devonaire kindly gives me a book by an atheist professor, Finding Godlessness at Harvard, with the request that I read it before next month’s appointment. I insist on knowing what diagnosis she is inscribing into my medical record, and she reluctantly consents. My stubborn scruples and delusions of guilt were relegated to a phenomenon associated with my microvascular ischemic brain disease and a serotonin deficiency, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder related to my brushes with death.

  Her diagnosis is laughable. “I don’t have a serotonin deficiency,” I insist, “and I’m not post-traumatic.”

  “Being in denial of it does not bode well for your therapy, Dr. Verity. Remember, your brain is 96 years old.” She stares at me as if I’m a stubborn psychotic patient who thinks his pills are space saucers from Mars.

  “Can you prove that my serotonin is deficient?”

  She smirks at me. “If you’ll take the SSRI, you’ll feel better.”

  “Not a chance. Not risking the E.D.”

  “Not with these fourth generation SSRIs, Raymond. Morgan will be more appreciative of the improvement in your sense of happiness and well-being than anybody. That’ll be proof enough that you need the med.”

  “Then we all need placebos, because they improve our sense of well-being better than anything.”

  “But—”

  “If you give it to anyone they’ll get a boost in their sense of well-being. That proves nothing.” I pause and absorb her critical glare—and Morgan’s. I lean toward Thomas and quip out of the corner of my mouth, “No category of western medicine is more like voodoo than psychiatry.”

  Dr. Devonaire snarls at my witty insult.

  “If you don’t do what she says, I promise you, you will regret it.” There is utter disgust in Morgan’s tone as she upbraids me.

  “I’ll double my L-methyl folate, which as you know, Dr. Devonaire, is a readily a
bsorbable serotonin precursor, but there’s no way I’m following any of your unscientific medical advice unless you can prove to me that my serotonin or norepi levels are low.”

  My intentionally rude words appear to offend my wife more than they do the neuro-psychiatrist.

  “I can schedule a brain biopsy to prove it,” Devonaire sneers.

  “Very funny,” Morgan snarls. “You wouldn’t.” It’s her first favorable disposition toward me during the meeting, and I’m flattered.

  “She’s trying to intimidate me, Morgan. She knows a biopsy wouldn’t discover what the physiological serotonin would be intra-synapse.”

  “All right, Dr. Verity,” Devonaire snaps, as if it is anything but. “You know I can’t prove it in a way that you will accept. Let’s try your remedy first, as it is an acceptable first line option.” She also recommends increasing some of my daily supplements for cerebral health. The notion that a chemical imbalance and the hardened capillaries in my brain have somehow negatively affected my reasoning faculties is downright laughable. Nevertheless, on the ride home I can clearly tell that Thomas and Morgan have a heretofore undiscovered respect for my opinion.

  Inwardly, I’m more distraught by my statements than they are, because if I’m right, then I’m in big trouble with God.

  28

  THE ADMINISTRATION’S CHIEF ATTORNEY, THE brilliant clone Guave Sealdor, informs me that the President has given me the authority to create my own panel to develop ethics recommendations for submission to her for consideration. Since I know no one on the front lines of the pro-life battle and do not consider myself an expert on the matter at all, I happily delegate this duty to my brother Thomas.

  My first committee meeting with him and his hand-picked team of religious conservatives and pro-family leaders is refreshing. Everybody seems excited to be in the same room with me, savoring my opinions and my experiences, enthusiastic about the opportunity to positively affect the ethics of New Body science and save lives. For the first time since my resurrection, I feel like I’m in charge of something positive. Thanks to Thomas’ personal counseling and spiritual guidance, my insatiable feelings of guilt and regret have been replaced with a sense of divinely orchestrated purpose.

  I uphold no false pretenses with these political and religious leaders, freely telling them of my experiences facing the impending recycling of Savannah’s clone, the difficulties working with Dr. Cranton after the publicizing of his sexual exploitation of dupes, and the realization that my loving, Down Syndrome granddaughter was going to be killed for the benefit and convenience of her loved ones. For the first hour of our two-hour meeting, I do most of the talking, gaining the empathy and respect from everyone in the room. They hail me as a William Wilberforce, a Norma McCorvey, a Bernard Nathanson, an Abby Johnson—a leader akin to the converted Saul of Tarsus, a God-ordained spearhead to win hearts, change minds, and ultimately transform the culture toward respect for life.

  The meeting continues with a unanimous insistence that they issue a formal condemnation of the Personhood movement, which has been the predominant force behind Alabama’s and Mississippi’s defiance of the federal judiciary in their arrest and attempted prosecution of those accused of terminating clones. What Alabama and Mississippi are doing, everyone agrees, will ultimately hurt the pro-life movement and cripple our ability to save lives. Those fringe fanatics are more like the John Browns of the abolitionist movement who do more harm than good, and we are the heroic pragmatists like Wilberforce who actually accomplish something meaningful.

  During the rest of the meeting, the leaders banter back and forth on what should be the primary focus of our committee. To me, a newcomer to this side of the line in the sand, it’s simple: protect the unprotected. However, these men and women have spilled sweat and blood in these trenches, and their comments make me feel naïve.

  After much discussion, it becomes clear that the judiciary is the highest hurdle for this movement. Almost all of the meaningful legislation that has curtailed the exploitation of some by others—whether dealing with abortion, physician-assisted suicide, or the abuse and exploitation of clones—a federal judge has, with the stroke of a pen, overcome their meticulously-developed democratic consensus, nullified their protective laws, and sent them, discouraged, back to the starting line.

  A consensus develops that the only kind of recommendation that is likely to pass the muster of the President and her team of attorneys is the same kind of restriction that has survived the judicial gauntlet in the past. Everyone settles on informed consent as a recommendation that should carefully be developed to submit to the President.

  Informed consent. That’s the battle line upon which they want to fight.

  I don’t want to act like an idiot asking a question of which everyone in the room appears to already know the answer, but I refuse to raise my hand for a vote, and Thomas notices.

  Thomas is apologetic. “I’m sorry, Ray, uh, I’m sorry, Dr. Verity . . . ”

  “Just call me Ray.”

  “I’m sorry. We’ve probably been talking over your head . . . ”

  “No, you haven’t,” I interrupt with a wave of my hand. “I do understand the issues better, and I thank you, but I want you to define what you mean by informed consent. Typically, in medicine, we define informed consent as the patient having sufficient understanding of the risk and benefits of a medicine or procedure in order to responsibly agree to the prescribed therapy.”

  Thomas shakes his head back and forth. “This is a modification of that kind of informed consent. Our aim would be to get owners of the genome to have sufficient understanding of the humanity and viability of their clone. They should know that the clone’s heart is beating and their brain waves are measurable before they consent to, to—”

  “To what?” I interrupt. “To suck the brains out of their skulls? To rape them? To cut them up and exploit their cells and body parts for profit? Are you kidding me?”

  The room erupts with murmuring and frantic fidgeting. I have hit a nerve.

  “Help me out here,” I look around the room. “Please, explain how consenting to a violent evil against an innocent person is mitigated at all by being adequately informed? My daughter has given fully informed consent to the death and exploitation of my granddaughter, and the policies you are proposing would permit it. How can we ever consent to such a, such a, such a horrible crime?”

  The attendees begin to talk over each other.

  “We’ve got to work within the law . . . ”

  “We can save lives with this recommendation . . . ”

  “At least this may actually be implemented. Better to succeed in a lesser battle than to lose in promoting a dreamy ideal.”

  “We do want to protect every clone!” Thomas transcends the dozen comments thrown at me all at once with his sheer volume. “We do, Raymond! But we have to be strategic and incremental, or we’re just going to be a John the Baptist in the wilderness, and then ultimately in the dungeon. Or a Maurice Whetley, fighting a battle that can only result in a token defeat, wasting immense opportunities on behalf of a sincere but hopeless ideal. If you want to sit at the table with the President and make meaningful recommendations that save lives, you have to be realistic and work within the system.”

  This is my introduction to pro-life political action. If I want to sit at the table of power, I have to sacrifice ideals and promote policies and legislation that I consider immoral. Principle, be damned—for the sake of principle, of course. Facilitate the killing, because that is the cost of successfully introducing more compassionate means of killing.

  This is how we promote the respect for life in the culture? By staining our hands with bloodguilt?

  29

  ON MY WAY INTO WORK after a sleepless night, I’m perusing the emails Mrs. Williamson, my new personal secretary, has thought worth my attention. It’s her memo, however, that has captivated me:

  “As always, I’m removing all the messages that include threats aga
inst your life and property. But you should be aware you are now receiving dozens a day, half of them from leftists furious about your attempt to restrict the New Body science, but half from anti-cloning extremists. I have forwarded them to the FBI as you requested.”

  I don’t recall making such a request, but I’m glad she forwarded them nonetheless.

  I shouldn’t be surprised at threats to my life, but kept relatively insulated from my gigabytes of email, I am usually comfortably unaware of these threats. It’s hard to believe there are those who hate me so much that they consider it worth the risk to send me a message threatening to kill me—or worse. Reminders like Mrs. Williamson’s memo reinvigorate the familiar fear that so horrified me when I was dying in that hospital bed, or looking down the barrel of Jeremy Porter’s pistol, or seeing Dr. Cranton’s mouth move but hearing no words when I was stroking out. It’s in moments like this that I wish I was not alone. I wish Thomas was here to comfort me with the promise of forgiveness and the hope of heaven.

  Jim, my limo driver, keeps looking in his rearview mirror. I set my coffee mug down in the cup holder and look back through the rear window to see what keeps drawing his attention away from the road.

  I tap the button to speak to him. “Jim, is that the same black town car that was following us last week?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Two occupants.”

  I squint to try to make out the two figures in the vehicle, but I cannot see through the mirrored windows. “How can you see them?”

  Jim taps his sunglasses. “They block UV light. Nice for fishing, too.”

  “Did you figure out who they were from the tag?”

  He shrugs. “It was a dead end. As far as I could tell, the tag doesn’t exist. It’s not a government-issued tag and it’s not a civilian tag.”

  “Criminals? Or government?”

  “Both, probably. I’m actually quite mystified by it. It’s against state law to create a tag that doesn’t exist. It’s also against FBI policy to use a false vehicle tag in the line of business.”