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).

This is the second part of a two-part series on the U.S. Bishops’ newdocument on reproductive technology, Life-Giving Love in an Age ofTechnology, issued on November 17(www.usccb.org/LifeGivingLove/lifegivinglovedocument.pdf ).  In thefirst essay I discussed the document’s ethical framework for analyzingparticular forms of reproductive assistance.  In this essay I reviewthe document’s ethical teaching on the following forms: using gametedonors, surrogate motherhood, homologous artificial insemination, invitro fertilization, and cloning.  Each consideration is brief.  Ifinterest is expressed, I’d be happy to develop one or another of thearguments in a future blast.

Health Care

Action Alert!

Pro-life amendment killed

- By now you have probably heard that yesterday Senator Barbara Boxer offered a motion to table (i.e., eliminate chances of voting on) the Pro-life Nelson Amendment, which would have excluded federal funding for abortion in the Senate Health Care Bill.

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

This book is so important and rich in content that I will devote two reports to it. In Part I, I will summarize chapters 1 through 4; in Part II I will summarize chapter 5 through 8 and offer brief reflections.

Progress on research creating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs):
I have written several times on the blockbuster breakthrough in stem cell research known as direct reprogramming, a technique for converting (“inducing”) common body cells (“somatic cells”) into pluripotent stem cells or iPSCs.  In November 2007 the team of Shinya Yamanaka of Japan’s University of Kyoto first published on the successful production of human iPSCs [1].  By injecting four select proteins delivered on the back of retroviruses into a skin cell, they were able to reprogram the highly differentiated skin cell back into the state of a pluripotent stem cell.  Amidst the well-deserved enthusiasm generated by the success, questions were raised at once about the retroviral delivery system.  Because the viruses tended to incorporate themselves into the new cell’s DNA, the technique risked tumor formation if ever used in clinical trials with humans.  Finding a harmless delivery system for the reprogramming proteins became the new challenge.

One of the issues most heatedly debated by Catholic bioethicists addressed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent document on bioethical issues, Dignitas personae, concerned the morality of prenatally adopting abandoned frozen embryos. Some Catholic bioethicists had argued that such prenatal adoption is intrinsically evil and can never rightly be practiced, whereas others had concluded that it is not and can rightly be practiced.

“It is better to be fit than unfit.” Who could disagree?  Health is good and desirable, sickness is bad and repugnant.  Pursuing the former and avoiding the latter are eminently worthwhile goals. But merely stating them in the form of goals leaves us in an overly abstract position.  Some goals are so basic and common-sensical that they literally cannot be criticized.  Concreteness and hence criticizability enters in when we begin considering practical means to achieving our goals: “the devil’s in the details.”  This is why so many things said in a State of the Union Address are unobjectionable: “Everyone deserves access to healthcare!” “We’re after an economy where all who want a good job can find one!” “I’m committed to lowering the out of wedlock birthrate!” “Nothing will stand between my administration and equality for all!”  The devil indeed is in the details.  Constructing a euphemism therefore involves among other things placing rhetorical emphasis for controversial ideas on readily acceptable values: pro-choice, planned parenthood, therapeutic medicine, hereditary improvement techniques.  Eugenics is a fertile ground for the use of euphemisms.

“By examining the genetic makeup of embryos, we can guarantee your next child will be the sex of your choice.” (Jeffrey Steinberg, The Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, from website [1])

“Britain is now admired internationally for its policies and practice in reproductive biology…[It gives] legal sanction to mixed animal–human embryos, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and saviour siblings…China has started to implement permissive national guidelines; the Chinese attitude towards the embryo is not burdened with Christian views.” (Ruth Deech, former chair of Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority [2])

September 8, 2008 is the official date of a new doctrinal document prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and approved by Pope Benedict XVI on bioethical issues.  It is a sequel to the CDF’s February 1987 doctrinal Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origins and on the Dignity of Procreation (Latin title Donum vitae). Dignitas Personae (henceforth DP), formally released for publication on December 12, 2008, is of a doctrinal nature and falls within the category of documents that "participate in the ordinary Magisterium of the successor of Peter" (see Instruction Donum veritatis, no.18), and is to be received by Catholics "with the religious assent of their spirit" (DP, no. 37).

Like many concerned with the welfare of vulnerable human life, the results of the Nov. 4 election have led me to question where our country is going.  Do the results imply we are growing more tolerant of abortion?  After three and a half decades of strenuous effort to sensitize our friends and neighbors to the ‘silent screams’ of the unborn, does the electoral outcome mean we’re losing the battle for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens?  Does electing a president as politically tolerant of killing human embryos, fetuses and newborns as Barack Obama mean our country’s moral callousness is thickening? What does the Obama victory foreshadow for the future of preborn human life in our country?

This helpful book could be called  “Catholic Bioethics for Everyone.” Dividing their material into an introduction and seven chapters subdivided into 57 questions, Smith and Kaczor offer a broad view of major life issues in easy-to-understand language. One of their major goals is to help fellow Catholics and others to understand the reasons behind Church teaching on crucial issues concerning human life; they also hope that their presentation of fundamental principles will guide readers in making their own choices on disputed questions on which the Church has not taken a firm stance (pp. xiii-xix).

The recent announcement of the first UK baby created with a new found product guaranteed to be free from breast cancer marks a new turn in human reproduction. While most of the attention has focused on the ability to provide a guarantee for the avoidance of a life-threatening illness, the question surrounding the therapeutic role of medicine has slid by the wayside.  

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/guest/2008/jk_0709.shtml (click here)

Lest anyone is tempted to think that the debate over hybrid embryo creation is premature, the troubling announcement on April Fools Day (4/1) that a research team at Newcastle University in England had successfully created the first part-human part-animal hybrid embryo (cow egg, human somatic cell nucleus) in the UK will make clear how late in the day the time actually is.  The embryo survived for three days.  Parliament will debate next month the morality and utility of socially sanctioning the creation of such embryos. 

Fellow in Ethics Christian Brugger clarifies, in layman terms, what it is to be: To be who we are when we were an embryo.

Recently a Catholic U.S. Coast Guard officer filed suit to prevent being forced to receive a vaccination he believed morally objectionable since the vaccine derived from the remains of an aborted child. The officer, Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Healy filed a complaint just last week, charging the government with using “its own arbitrary judgment of what constitutes Catholic theology while permitting religious exemptions to others.”

A collage of headlines covering Monday’s breakthrough in stem cell research, published in the scientific journals, Science and Cell, attempt to state what, to many, is not so obvious.   What we have found are pluripotent stem cells, equal to, but not to be confused with pluripotent embryonic stem cells.

On Sept. 5, a government agency (called the Human Fertilization and Embryology Agency or HFEA) decided to let scientists, mad or otherwise, create human/animal hybrids. Let me repeat: Science fiction will become science fact very soon; and man and beast will be combined into one.