Noah and the Flood

Monday (January 16, 2017) is Noah Benton Markham's 10th birthday. Let me tell you his story.

Noah is a survivor, a survivor of the great flood. No, I am not talking about the flood of biblical proportions. I am talking about Hurricane Katrina. The winds and the rain of the devastating storm that inundated New Orleans threatened his life at the very earliest stages.

Even before it hit, they were worried about him. While many were leaving the New Orleans for higher ground, Noah was moved to the third floor of Lakeland Medical Center. But when almost two weeks had passed since the rest of the hospital's patients had been evacuated the hospital was still surrounded by eight feet of water. There was a growing danger that the lack of air conditioning would cause Noah to die.

Dr. Sissy Sartor, and lab technician, Roman Pyrzak sprang into action to organize a rescue team. Seven Illinois Conservation Police officers and three additional officers from the Louisiana State Police joined them in flat-bottom boats brought from Illinois.

They reached the crippled hospital on September 11, 2005. Noah along with 1400 others were found alive and taken in their boats to safety. This single rescue operation alone prevented the casualties of Hurricane Katrina from nearly doubling.

Of course, by now you have noticed some unusual features of the story. Not the least of which is: How do you fit 1412 people into three flat-bottom boats? Why did they not evacuate with the rest of the patients? And, How can Noah be a survivor of a storm that happened more than eleven years ago when he is only now celebrating his tenth birthday?

These riddles are solved when you understand that, at the time of Hurricane Katrina, Noah and his fellow refugees were very small. So small you need a microscope to see them. They were at a stage of human development which most people experience for a only few days about thirty-nine weeks before they are born.

But while most people naturally grow through the blastocyst stage and right on into the next stages of human development, Noah and his fellow refugees had been frozen in time. Liquid nitrogen canisters kept them in a state of cryopreservation.

They had been conceived in a laboratory in small groups of congenital twins. And for many, one of the twins was already born while they awaited their turn to be in the warmth of their mother's womb. For Noah, his older brother, Witt, had already celebrated his first birthday and he had four other siblings, like himself, awaiting a chance to be born.

After his rescue, Noah remained frozen for another seven months until he resumed his development inside his mother, Rebekah. For this reason Noah has been called the youngest survivor of Hurricane Katrina.

It's the kind of story that warms the heart and makes you cheer. Right out of the depths of utter devastation comes life. It also can help us, as a community, put a human face on what is all-too-often lost in abstract terms. Terms like "embryo" and "fetus" are oftentimes used to mask the fact that this is a child, a person, a Noah.

This is not a religious assertion. It is simply a scientific fact. Noah, already at the time of his rescue, was a complete, fully functional and perfectly sized human being for his stage of development.

Just as you were fully functional as a newborn, long before you could walk, so also you will remain a full human being even if you should become crippled. Your size, appearance, and abilities change constantly throughout your life. But none of this changes who you are.

Not only can science tell the difference between an eagle and a human being from the very moment of conception, so also science could tell the difference between Noah and his siblings from the very moment of conception. He was the same person on the day of his rescue as he will be on his tenth birthday.

I emphasize the science because there is a significant push today to deny human protections to these people and kill them in the name of scientific research. But the only way to do this is to first leave the realm of science and deny their humanity by some religious theory.

Arguments for embryonic stem cell research, and other practices which kill embryos, must find some non-scientific reason to deny that a human life is, in fact, a human life. The body of any human being grows and develops in a smooth, uninterrupted, continual motion.

Since no serious scientist can question the fact of being human, the battleground is typically moved to theories of "personhood." That moves it into the realm of religion. They have introduced a concept that cannot be measured scientifically, but must be taken on faith.

The problem is two-fold. First, once you claim that a human being is not necessarily a person, what additional criterion must a human being have before they have achieved personhood? Second, who is granted the power to decide when they have gotten this additional quality?

Stabs at answering the first question are all over the map. Some say personhood has to do with brain development, others with sensation, others with consciousness, and on and on. But every such theory ends up proving too much. In an attempt to de-personify an embryo, they also de-personify all kinds of people way past the embryonic stage.

Corpses at Buchenwald: U.S. Holocaust Museum

The second question is even more troubling. We have seen the horrific history of those who arrogated to themselves the right to treat categories of fellow human beings as non-persons. From slavery to the holocaust, injustice and bloodshed are visited upon the “non-persons” while the people in power lose their own humanity in the process.

But there is no need to enter into this iffy and contentious debate. We already have something obvious and intuitive: A human being is a person; and a person is a human being. There is no need for further qualification. Neither race, sex, age, development, location, strength, consciousness, or any other philosophy or religion need be consulted. It’s not complicated. It’s only human.