Scientific research and medical applications arising from such research should be guided by a moral framework that both values human life and protects the dignity of individuals.Dignitas Personae, the new Vatican bioethics document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, aims to do this.
As such, it deserves thoughtful consideration by scientists who develop reproductive and therapeutic technologies, by physicians who apply them, and by the people who benefit from them.
Dignitas Personae catalogues the consequences of actions derived from a moral framework based on a point of view about personhood — a view that is not shared by all. This point of view accords the dignity of a person to the first cell that results from fertilization of an egg by a sperm. If this premise is accepted, all the consequences detailed in Dignitas Personae logically follow.
These consequences include the condemnation of any pharmacological intervention that prevents the products of fertilization from implanting in a womb (the document says anyone using such a pill "intends abortion").
It censures the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF), a process that has helped bring to birth 3.5 million children of infertile parents.
It denounces the adoption of already-produced IVF embryos that will otherwise be discarded, even when these IVF embryos could enable infertile couples to bear children.
Not surprisingly, it proscribes seeking cures to diseases through research with embryonic stem cells.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: CTHUS)