When I speak publically on bioethical issues, the topic I most frequently address is the problem of the terrible exploitation of human embryos.

Meilaender takes these topics up in chapters 4 and 5, of his Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. I will devote more space to the first issue.

CHAPTER 4, GENETIC ADVANCE (pp. 38-47)
Summary and Comment
Meilaender’s principal concern in this chapter centers on a new kind of medical therapy aimed at curing persons suffering from or genetically disposed to different genetically caused diseases such as Down Syndrome, sickle-cell anemia, diabetes, and many, many others. After describing how some of these diseases are caused genetically, Meilaender then examines the basic forms of genetic therapy: germ cell therapy and somatic cell therapy. Modifications of germ cells (i.e., the cells proper to males and females, sperm and ova respectively, that when united become a newly conceived human person) are passed on to future generations whereas modifications of somatic cells (=equals the cells found in different parts of an individual’s body, e.g., in one’s brain, pancreas, liver, colon, etc.) are not and affect only the individual whose somatic cells are modified (39-41). Meilaender repudiates germ cell therapy, judging its supposed great benefit—the overcoming of disease not just in one person but in future generations--to be its “greatest danger…[which] C. S. Lewis memorably characterized as the ‘abolition of man.’” By this Meilaender and Lewis mean that the risks of such therapy and the harmful effects it might have on our children and grandchildren are not known to man but only to God—and we are not God and ought not “play” God. On the other hand, the moral questions raised by somatic cell therapy do not call for “the no that should be spoken to germ cell modification but for caution and a willingness to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable aims of therapy” (42-43).

In this Part I summarize Chapters 5 though 8 and offer reflections and comments on this very important book.