Friday, January 02, 2009

Dignitas Personae and the Right to Life

Brian Clowes, PhD

NOTE: this is the first of a two-part series on the new instruction from the Vatican on bioethics. Dr. Brian Clowes has been an HLI missionary for twelve years and offers this first reflection of 2009 for the Spirit and Life® audience.

There are two causes of most of the human misery that afflicts the world today. The first is lack of respect for the transmission of life within the marital union, which leads to destructive practices such as contraception, sterilization, abortion, homosexual adoption and “gay marriage.” The second is a lack of respect for the born human person, which has given us murder, genocide, racism, slavery, rape and many other evils.

On December 12 of last year, the highest doctrinal agency in the Catholic Church, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), released its first comprehensive instruction on bioethics since Donum Vitae in 1987. This document, Dignitas Personae [“The Dignity of a Person”], is an “instruction,” and therefore does not proclaim an infallibly defined dogma. However, it was carefully reviewed and approved by Pope Benedict XVI and thus carries his full authority. It is therefore an integral part of the universal ordinary Magisterium, with which Catholics must inform their consciences and adhere to with religious assent.

In Dignitas Personae, the Church applies timeless moral principles to new issues and situations that have arisen from biotechnology over the past two decades. This document is based on a foundation of consistency of respect for the human person at all stages of life. We have seen that, when we begin to make exceptions to the universal dignity of the human person for whatever reason, even if it is to promote the welfare of other human beings, we inevitably veer away from the natural law and flounder in the swamp of moral relativism.

Those who read Dignitas Personae in a cursory or superficial manner might believe it to be a mere laundry list of prohibitions. However, from the very first paragraph, the document affirms the fundamental dignity of every human person, from conception to natural death, regardless of race, sex or disability. To be created in the image and likeness of Almighty God is the highest calling, and Dignitas Personae vigorously defends this status.

Far from being a negative document, Dignitas Personae is very positive in tone, showing us how to live a life free of the oppressive worries and guilt suffered by those who even partially embrace the Culture of Death. It frequently refers to the dignity of marriage and the human person, in addition to the positive results of scientific research and therapy used to overcome infertility and disease.

The document does not shout “STOP!” at the progress of science, but instead guides it towards being truly at the service of life and not of death or the manipulation of human persons. As it so eloquently says, “Behind every ‘no’ in the difficult task of discerning between good and evil, there shines a great ‘yes’ to the recognition of the dignity and inalienable value of every single and unique human being called into existence” [37].

Dignitas Personae favors the weak. If we lose sight of the weak or exploit them, we also lose sight of our very humanity. In such a world, the strong rule without regard to the small and helpless, not only in the laboratory but also over entire continents.

Just because the Church renders negative judgments about some biotechnologies, or cautions about possible pitfalls, does not mean that it is anti-technological. Dignitas Personae says that, in using these new technologies, man “participates in the creative power of God” and is “the steward of the value and intrinsic beauty of creation” [36]. History has shown us that any new major technology can be used to enhance human dignity or to oppress, destroy and exploit entire populations. Science needs a firm and clear ethical framework precisely because it has such great potential for doing either good or evil.

The potential of the new biosciences seems to be limited only by man’s imagination. Since it is sometimes difficult to find our way in a confusing and complex world, Dignitas Personae offers welcome guidance. It draws a straight and clear line between activities that treat human beings as a commodity to be produced — or as God’s greatest gift.



Newsletter
Volume 04, Number 02
Friday, January 09, 2009

http://www.hli.orgdignitas/

Personae and the Right to Life Part II

Brian Clowes, PhD

NOTE: this is the second installment of a two-part series on the document Dignitas Personae. Author Brian Clowes has been an HLI missionary for twelve years and offers this reflection on the practical aspects of the document for the Spirit and Life audience.

As we saw last week, the primary purpose of the new Vatican instruction on bioethics, Dignitas Personae, is to clarify Church teachings on biotechnologies that have become prominent since Donum Vitae was published in 1987. Dignitas Personae draws a bright line between scientific activities that treat human beings as a commodity to be produced – or as God’s greatest gift.

One of the primary topics addressed by Dignitas Personae is assisted reproductive technologies, or ARTs. Some people think that the authentic pro-lifer should welcome any means taken to bring children into this world, but such thinking reflects an improper understanding of human dignity.

The Catholic Church has always taught that a child should be the fruit of total self-giving between a man and woman who are committed to each other through marriage. Technologies that assist the marital union in conceiving a child through natural means respect the dignity of the child. One example would be the surgical repair of damaged Fallopian tubes. However, those that replace it through brute-force technology, such as in-vitro fertilization, do not respect this inherent dignity and inevitably lead to terrible abuses.

For example, if a child can be conceived in a Petri dish, why should we not then check to ensure that this “product” is free of defects? Why not freeze, experiment on, or discard embryos that are defective or that nobody wants? Why not use gametes from people who have desirable genetic characteristics? Why not rent a third party’s uterus to perform the arduous task of childbearing, thereby pushing pregnancy into the province of the poor?

Dignitas Personae is very helpful in that it clearly shows how certain common medical procedures may be either licit or illicit, depending on their objective or usage;

• the freezing of oocytes is illicit, although the freezing of ovaries may be permissible if a woman with cancer or some other disease of the ovaries desires to have children in the future;
• pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which “weeds out” those embryos deemed to be inferior is not allowable because it is a eugenic procedure, although prenatal diagnosis is permissible if its intent is to prepare medical teams and parents to properly care for a sick infant;
• embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) is impermissible, since it invariably leads to the death of the embryo, although adult stem cell research is licit; and
• using gene therapy to enhance the human race is considered the ultimate in the condemned pseudoscience of positive eugenics, although the same type of therapy used to cure disease in a single subject’s non-reproductive cells would be permissible. In other words, correcting a specific defect in one person’s cells is called “somatic cell” gene therapy and is acceptable. But “germ line” gene therapy, which would affect all of a person’s cells, is not, since it requires manipulation of embryos in a laboratory.

Since Donum Vitae in 1987, rapidly advancing biological technology has raised many completely new issues. One of these is “altered nuclear transfer,” or human cloning that produces embryonic stem cells but not an embryo. This procedure needs more study to ensure that a new human being is never created and then destroyed before it can be declared licit. By contrast, reprogramming adult cells into what are called “induced pluripotent stem cells” is allowable since it can never result in the creation of a human person.

Pro-lifers will perhaps find the most controversial segment of Dignitas Personae to be the one dealing with the “prenatal adoption” of frozen embryos, leading to the birth of “snowflake babies.” The desire to adopt these “orphan” embryos is certainly well intentioned and understandable, but leads to a number of problems, the primary of which is the perpetuation of the system that leads to the perceived necessity for such adoptions in the first place. The closest parallel might be Christian organizations which recently “bought back” slaves in Sudan, which implicitly implied that human beings may be bought and sold, and also encouraged slave-taking for profit. Dignitas Personae warns of the many ethical and practical problems associated with it.

Another subject that pro-lifers have been debating for years is vaccines made from the cell lines of aborted preborn babies. For the first time, the Church definitively addresses this topic in Dignitas Personae. The document states that parents may legitimately use such vaccines if there are no alternatives, since they have no say in how the vaccines are made. However, the parents should always ask their health care systems to make other vaccines available.

Dignitas Personae represents a welcome clarification regarding many medical and scientific procedures in the increasingly complex area of human reproduction, and will answer many questions that have, until now, not been dealt with authoritatively.

We urge all of our readers to go directly to the document and study it if they have any questions.