Modern technologies lead to a new era of eugenics

Msgr. Pedro Lopez-Gallo

Children acquire human rights not by birth but by conception. This is why the Church requires that aborted fetuses be baptized.

It is becoming more common today that children are born of surrogate mothers, that test tube babies and children are conceived in-vitro using sperm and ova banks.

We do well to remember the words of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who has since become Pope Benedict XVI: “It is only sound to recognize that all these children are conceived through human ova and human sperm, which produce human life, and with conception the soul is created.”

Using modern biotechnology, laboratories are producing test-tube children and attempting to clone animals and human beings. The progress of science is paved with stories of high hopes and heartbreaks. One of the goals of the researchers is to cure Parkinson’s disease, brain tumors, bladder cancer, you name it, using human stem cells.

Stem cells are different from other cells of the body in that they develop into various other kinds of cells and tissues. This ability allows them to replace cells that have died, so doctors want to use them to replace defective tissue, including blood and brain cells, in patients with certain diseases or defects.

Usually several embryos are produced in vitro, but only the most viable embryos are selected for implantation; the leftover embryos, the majority, are “discarded.” Since conception has occurred, this is to say that very early stage humans are killed.

The Vatican has already strongly warned: “Catholics involved in any aspect of the destruction of human embryos could face excommunication” (see The B.C. Catholic of July 10, 2006).

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as the Catholic Organization for Life and Family have condemned stem cell research using embryos, whether the embryos are frozen or “fresh,” because the process destroys human life: “It is the same thing as abortion and similarly entails excommunication, and the excommunication applies to the women, doctors, and researchers who eliminate embryos.”

The Church does support the use of stem cells derived from adults or from umbilical cord blood for scientific research.

A detailed analysis of the moral and ethical development of these biotechnologies is clearly beyond the scope of this article.

Perhaps the most horrible process involves the use of so-called “medicine babies,” babies conceived solely for medical purposes. Apparently the end seems attractive and profitable, but the means are not only questionable, they are morally wrong.

The bishops of Switzerland reacted strongly to the first “medicine baby” born in Geneva a year ago, calling it a “shocking” and unacceptable development. They said the process “constitutes a worrying form of eugenics.”

A baby girl was conceived through artificial insemination and was selected in a Brussels laboratory to become a compatible donor of bone marrow for her 6-year-old brother. The lab deliberately produced 20 to 30 human embryos for the purpose of selection.

The bishops said, “One of the embryos had the good fortune to survive, but the rest were eliminated and destroyed as vulgar merchandise.” Their document warned that such a practice is inadmissible for two reasons.

First, because “human embryos were voluntarily produced and then eliminated.” The bishops explained, “A noble end does not justify killing embryos,” which are individual humans. “Here the embryo is not treated as an end, it is used as an instrument and considered to be merchandise.”

They referred to the practice as a “regression” of humanity which is “particularly insidious” as the issue is clouded by “the emotion aroused by the sick child and the parents’ suffering.”

Second, their statement declared, “the selection of human beings is an act of eugenics.” In this case, an exterior demand, medical and technical, decided who deserved to live and who deserved to die. One embryo deserved to live because it was genetically compatible with the recipient of the bone marrow, while the other numerous embryos were killed for the sole reason of not having the required characteristics.”

This is to play God, but “only God is the giver of life, human and divine.”

Msgr. Lopez-Gallo’s columns are available in two volumes for $20 each from St. Andrew’s Church Supply, 275 E. 8 Ave., Vancouver, V5T 1R9, or toll-free at 1-800-663-7161. Proceeds will go to Hogar de Nazareth Orphanage in Mexico, which he sponsors.