VIII
MUTANT RIGHTS, TORTURE, AND X-PERIMENTATION
Cynthia McWilliams
Mutants Are Different
Magneto claims that mutants are a new stage in human evolution. “We are the future, Charles, not them,” he tells Professor Xavier. “They no longer matter.” When Xavier explains to his old friend and nemesis that humankind has evolved since the Nazis confined the young Magneto in a concentration camp and murdered his family, Magneto simply replies, “Yes, [they have evolved] into us.”
While Xavier and Magneto continue their philosophical debate over how mutants should treat “normal” humans, we humans can argue about how we should treat mutants. Is it acceptable for humans to experiment on mutants like Wolverine, as long as we don’t cause them long-term physical harm? Can we send out the Sentinels to capture, confine, and control the mutants? As we shall see, the central issue in answering these questions is whether mutants have “human” rights.
The X-Gene
Does the presence of the X-gene in a mutant place him or her outside of the realm of human moral consideration? For help in answering this question, let’s consider another genetically unique group of individuals, people with Down syndrome (which in 95 percent of cases is caused by the presence of an extra copy of chromosome 21 at conception).
1 Historically, many people with Down syndrome have been sterilized and placed under the care of the state, either against their will or without their consent. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that such treatment is morally permissible. Is it the presence of the extra chromosome that justifies treating people with Down syndrome differently? No, the justification is rooted in the supposition of a low level of functioning and competence. People with Down syndrome generally cannot function independently.
The average mutant, by contrast, functions perfectly well and is competent to make decisions for him- or herself. So, although the average mutant is in some ways different from the average human being in terms of “extra” abilities, both humans and mutants possess the same reasoning abilities. The concern of normal human beings regarding mutants is, therefore, not so much a question of mutant competence, as in the case of people with Down syndrome. Rather, concern arises because of the potential harm mutants can cause humans.
But They Can Look Just Like Everyone Else . . .
Mutant powers often manifest at puberty, although some are brought on by duress, and others are even present at birth. Many mutants are visually indistinguishable, even after power manifestation (except while using their powers). So whereas it would be difficult for the average human to hide a weapon that could kill hundreds of people, the average mutant can easily hide his or her tremendous power. How does this affect mutants’ rights and responsibilities?
Of course, it is just this problem of mutants looking like everyone else, yet possessing incredible potential for harming others, that leads Senator Kelly, in the first X-Men movie, to argue in front of an eager crowd for legislation requiring the registration, and one can only assume the eventual confinement, of mutants: “There are mutants who can enter our minds and control our thoughts, taking away our God-given free will.”
So does power-potential place mutants outside the protection of human rights?
The U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) asserts that “all men [people] are created equal . . . with certain unalienable [inalienable] Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
2 The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
3These declarations are intended as statements of how we ought to treat others. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security; slavery, torture, and “inhuman” treatment are wrong. Fair enough. But who counts in the category of “everyone” deserving these rights?
Morality and Impartiality: Aliens vs. Mutants
Are mutants included in “everyone”? Consider the following thought experiment. If a spaceship were to land tomorrow in Iowa (they always land somewhere desolate, after all!), and peaceful, non-carbon-based life forms that we could recognize as distinct entities emerged from it, would such beings deserve our moral consideration? Would they fall into the category of “everyone”? It seems that what matters in delineating “everyone” here would be the abilities of the individuals in question. If the aliens could demonstrate advanced reasoning ability (landing on Earth in a spaceship would count in this category) and some communication skills and sentience, then why wouldn’t they count in the category of “everyone” deserving of moral consideration? Surely, it would be problematic to exclude a creature from moral consideration simply because it is not of our species.
4 The aliens’ functioning and abilities would make the difference in moral consideration on this account. It would be wrong, for example, to imprison and torture and experiment on these peaceful aliens. And if strange-looking aliens deserve “human rights” and moral consideration, then why wouldn’t mutants?
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that privacy and autonomy rights follow from the rights granted in the Constitution. And court cases involving patients’ and subjects’ rights to make decisions regarding health care and experimental participation have upheld such autonomy rights, the rights to be self-determining and to make our own decisions.
Rights and duties are usually thought to be correlated. That is, if an individual has a certain right, the right to autonomy, for example, then someone else has the corresponding duty not to interfere with that right. So if mutants have basic human rights, then other people, normal humans and mutants alike, have the corresponding duty and responsibility not to interfere with them.
The Duties of Mutants and Magneto on Mutant Superiority
Magneto claims in the first X-Men movie that mutants are the future of humanity. His statements suggest that mutants are a subspecies of humans, Homo superior, a recent step on the evolutionary ladder. Of course, it may be argued that mutants like Magneto and the rank and file of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are dangerous and threaten humanity and, as such, deserve to be treated in a less-than-humane manner. Sure, some mutants are dangerous, but so are some humans. Of course, the level of threat or the possibility of harm that a mutant can cause (especially omega-level mutants like Phoenix, for example) is significantly greater in most cases than the average human could ever cause. Separating themselves from humankind, Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants use the oppression of mutants at the hands of average humans as a rallying cry and a reason to harm, even kill, humans as they see fit. One of their implicit arguments is: if mutants do not deserve the same degree of moral consideration that we afford to average human beings, then mutants are justified in placing humans outside of mutants’ moral consideration. We have seen, however, that mutants should be included in the class of “everyone” deserving of basic human rights. But do mutants have any extra responsibilities?
Considering the power that many mutants wield, perhaps they should have greater moral constraints placed on their behavior and thus have greater moral duties than the average human being. Even though they deserve the same moral consideration and have the same basic moral rights as average human beings, they may have greater responsibilities to other sentient creatures. The average human being has the right not to be harmed unnecessarily, and so mutants who have a greater potential for harm have greater duties not to harm. Although these may not be different and distinct duties, they are at least duties that follow from mutants’ potential.
But mutants’ added moral responsibilities do not undermine the duties we owe to them. If it’s wrong in general to torture or experiment on normal human beings, as most moral reasoning would lead us to believe, then it is wrong to torture or experiment on mutants. So let’s look at the reasons for thinking that torture and experimentation on humans are wrong.
Experimentation without Consent and Torture
There are many good reasons why it is morally wrong to torture human beings or to use them in potentially harmful experiments without their consent. The most obvious is that competent human beings have the right to be self-determining and to make their own decisions—the right to autonomy. A consequence of the recognition of autonomy is the practice of informed consent. It is morally (and typically legally, as well) required that we attempt to obtain an informed consent from an individual before performing any medical procedure on the individual or before using him or her in any potentially harmful experiment. Using people in experiments, either without their consent or against their explicit wishes by coercion or force, is thus problematic as it infringes upon their right to autonomy—their right to make their own decisions regarding their own best interests.
It is uncontroversial that we have the rights not to be tortured or experimented upon without our consent. It is controversial, however, whether these rights can be overridden by the possibility of benefit to others.
Rights vs. Beneficial Consequences
Wolverine leaves Xavier’s school at the end of the first X-Men movie to confront his lingering demons from the surgical implantation of adamantium onto his skeleton, a procedure that was seemingly done without his consent.
5 A similar theme of experimentation on mutants recurs in the two subsequent X-Men movies, as well as in numerous storylines from the X-Verse. In
X-Men: The Last Stand, many mutants are incited by Magneto’s quite plausible claim that the recently developed “cure” for mutants will be forcibly inflicted on them against their will. Now let’s add a utilitarian twist: what if experimentation like this, performed on some mutants, yields results that greatly benefit both humankind and mutantkind?
6Even if mutants have the same basic human rights as normal human beings, these rights may be overridden, under certain circumstances. On this line of reasoning, causing harm to a few to save many may be justified. Even if we reject such consequentialist moral reasoning in general, almost everyone agrees that basic human rights can be overridden in some circumstances. We can imprison people against their will when they have been found guilty of a crime, for example, thus overriding their basic rights to liberty and autonomy. We reason that such punishment is warranted to protect others, to reform the criminal, or simply because the criminal deserves to be punished.
Consequentialist arguments are typically offered to support torture in certain circumstances.
7 For example, we see scenarios on television and in the movies involving the “necessary” torture of a supposed terrorist to extract information that could save hundreds or even thousands of lives. The implication is that the suspected terrorist, like the convicted criminal, and like the evil, overly powerful mutant, is not innocent and can therefore be sacrificed to save innocent lives.
We are then faced with a related but quite different problem: given that mutants have the same basic human rights as average human beings, when, if ever, is it morally permissible to override these rights for the good of the many?
And like any good story arc, this one ends on a cliffhanger.
NOTES
4 For a discussion of “speciesism,” see Peter Singer’s
Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 1990).
5 Although this lack of consent is questioned by Colonel William Stryker in the 2003 movie
X-Men 2: X-Men United, when he claims that Wolverine volunteered for the program that led to his adamantium skeletal grafts.
6 Utilitarianism is a moral theory that contends that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined solely by the consequences of the action. Although there are numerous versions of utilitarianism, they all share the same commitment to the consequentialist principle that actions lack inherent moral worth and are to be judged on the basis of consequences.
7 See, for example, Bob Brecher,
Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007; and Vittorio Bufacchi and Jean Maria Arrigo, “Torture, Terrorism and the State: A Refutation of the Ticking-Bomb Argument,”
Journal of Applied Philosophy (2006): 3-23, 355-373.