It is not uncommon for parents of children or the care-givers responsible for older but incompetent persons to be asked by their doctors to allow these “voiceless” [1] subjects to take part in “non-therapeutic” experiments, i.e., experiments that are not designed to be of benefit to the children or incompetent persons but rather to gain knowledge that may be of great benefit to others. Such permission is called “proxy” or “surrogate” consent.

The ideas of the young international movement known as "transhumanism" are beginning to characterize the thinking of an increasing number of clinicians and bioethicists. I thought therefore that our readers might profit from a brief introduction to them.

Working at home last week, I heard my son’s voice penetrating the French doors of my office shouting, “You IDIOT!”  I gently called out, “Son, please come here.”  Knowing he’s not allowed to call his sister an idiot, he dutifully and somewhat nervously entered my office.  I got down on my knees to look him in the eyes at his own height, took his little hands lightly in my own, and said to my three year old boy: “Son, did you call your sister an idiot?”  He looked at me with his perfectly round eyes perched atop two perfectly round cheeks and centered in his perfectly round head, and said with solemn confidence, “No.”  I said, “You didn’t just shout ‘idiot’ to her in the kitchen?”  Unblinking, he repeated his confident denial.  With my disciplinary back to the wall, I decided to repeat firmly the family’s negative norm—“No call Maymay,” (his sister, Mary) “an idiot… Yes, daddy?”  “Yes, daddy,” he replied.  And I excused him.

This is the subject of Chapter 3 of Meilaender’s Bioethics: A Primer for Christians (2nd ed. 2005). I devote one essay to this matter because in my judgment the chapter, while excellent in many respects, includes a defense of abortion in some very limited circumstances—when necessary to save the mother’s life and when the pregnancy results from forcible or incestuous sexual relations. Not only do I disagree with Meilaender here I also think that his defense of abortion in these circumstances is not compatible with his own basic convictions as expressed in other parts of the same chapter.

Introduction. This first part of a two-part essay addresses the matters identified in the title above. Part II will examine the thought of leading proponents of the “new biology’s” eugenic program.

Historical background
Definition and status during 19th, early 20th, and late 20th centuries
Eugenics is based on the  belief that it is possible to improve the human species by means such as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesired traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). Among early advocates of eugenics in the 19th century were Francis Dalton and Charles Darwin in England, and Margaret Sanger in the United States. A strong opponent of eugenics in the early 20th century was Gilbert Keith Chesterton, whose Eugenics and Other Evils unmasked this movement’s inhuman philosophy.  Hitler’s program of eugenics brought the movement into disrepute in the middle of the 20th century.

The Difference Between a “Right” and a “Liberty” and the Significance of This Difference in Debates over Public Policy on Abortion and Euthanasia

There is a great deal of talk in our society today about “rights.” Frequently, people talk about rights as a two-term relationship between a person (or persons) and a thing or an action. Thus pro-life people affirm the right of the unborn to life, whereas NOW and Planned Parenthood claim the right of women to have an abortion, workers their right to a just wage, smokers their right to smoke, some infertile couples their right to have a child, etc.

Chaput, Charles J., O.F.M. Cap., Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. New York: Doubleday, 2008. 258 pp.

This timely book by the Archbishop of Denver is of crucial importance for all American Catholics, who should all be struggling to combat the “culture of death” and develop the “culture of life.” One of his major reasons for writing the book was that he was becoming increasingly tired “of the church and her people being told to be quiet on public issues that urgently concern us” (p. 3). He wrote it to challenge “all of us who call ourselves Catholic…to recover what it really means to be ‘Catholic.’…[and] to find again the courage to be Catholic Christians first—not in opposition to our country, but to serve its best interests” (p. 7). Although speaking as an American Catholic to American Catholics, he hopes “many other people of good heart will see the importance of these issues and find value in these pages” (pp. 6-7).

Although they were misleading, Senator Pelosi’s comments on Meet the Press were not entirely incorrect.  Responding to Tom Brokaw, who asked: “Help me out here, Madame Speaker.  When does life begin?”  Pelosi replied, “the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition…  I don’t think anyone can tell you when life begins—human life.  As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this.”  When Brokaw countered saying, “The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it begins at the point of conception.”  Pelosi replied: “over the history of the Church, this is an issue of controversy.”  Strictly speaking, she is right; the precise moment of the beginning of human life was disputed by theologians for centuries.  John Connery’s classic work on the development of the Roman Catholic teaching on abortion makes this clear (see John Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1977).  The controversy concerned the question of the moment of ensoulment. A centuries old position, relying on Aristotelian embryology, was that the human soul was infused by God forty to eighty days after conception, depending on the sex of the fetus.  Some theologians held that before this time the fetus was not human.  Based upon the best empirical evidence available at the time, this was not unreasonable to hold.