Pontifical Academy for Life president Archbishop Rino Fisichella has warned that advances in genetic testing are causing the slow but "relentless" spread of a new eugenics mentality. Archbishop Fisichella issued the warning as he outlined the scope of an upcoming Vatican conference, "The New Frontiers of Genetics and the Risk of Eugenics," which starts Friday, Associated Press reports.
He acknowledged the term eugenics harks back to the past, when most famously the Nazis used eugenic theories to justify forced sterilisation and other practices in their quest to establish a master race.
"The term 'eugenics' seems to have been relegated to the past, and just saying its name strikes horror," Fisichella told a news conference.
But he said the same mentality is growing, "slowly but relentlessly" albeit under different names and hidden by slick publicity campaigns by well funded biomedical interests.
"While it would seem there is no place for it in our democratic societies that respect the principle of the human person, eugenics ... is nevertheless reappearing in practice in good conscience," he said.
The Vatican has, for example, opposed pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) on embryos to screen for hereditary illnesses because it often results in the destruction of embryos.
Archbishop Fisichella acknowledged that medical advances derived from the Human Genome Project, which mapped the approximately 25,000 human genes in 2003, offered "concrete possibilities" for avoiding hereditary genetic illnesses.
But he warned that the eugenics mentality "tends to consider that there are people who have less value than others".
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(Source: CTHN)