Priest Discusses Ethics of Embryo Research and Cloning

Ed Oliver
December 10, 2002

Is it ethical to create and then destroy human embryos in a quest to cure disease? When is an embryo a person?

Exploring these questions, Father Tadeuz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., lectured at Holy Cross College last fall on the subject of "Human Embryos: Science, Ethics, and the Cloning Debate."

In order to help his audience understand the science surrounding the debate, "Father Tad," who is a doctor of neuroscience and a priest in the Diocese of Fall River, began with a basic scientific discussion.

Stem Cells

Stem cells are cells that are unspecialized and can renew themselves indefinitely and then develop into more mature, specialized cells such as a heart or a liver cell.

Scientists say they are interested in stem cells harvested from embryos because they appear able to develop into any type of cell in the body.

Using these stem cells from embryos, they hope someday to be able to grow new tissue in order to repair diseased organs. Harvesting these cells, however, necessitates destroying the living embryo.

Even if they successfully generate new tissue from stem cells that are harvested from an embryo, the body tends to reject transplanted foreign tissue, so scientists are researching ways to take cells from the sick person's own body and fuse it with a donated human egg (with the nucleus removed). In this way, the donated egg is tricked into thinking it is fertilized. The resulting embryo is a cloned identical twin of the sick person. After a week or so, the embryo is destroyed and the stem cells harvested. This is called "therapeutic" cloning.

If the embryo is not destroyed and left alone to grow, it will be born as a cloned human being (if human cloning is ever perfected and not outlawed). This is called "reproductive" cloning.

Most people have rejected the idea of reproductive cloning and seek to outlaw it, but many still cling to the idea of so-called "therapeutic cloning," which is the same procedure, said Father Tad, except the identical twin is killed after a week or two and its cells harvested. The media, he said, creates the impression that this is very different from reproductive cloning.

This raises moral and ethical concerns, said Father Tad. They are making human life in order to exploit and destroy it. There are 18 ways to make a baby now, he said. Ethics are behind science. There is a business side to human reproductive technology. Big money influences the debate. Some companies are even attempting to salinger.royalties from original stem cell lines.

Father Tad said that despite the fixation of some on embryonic stem cells, the adult stem cell field is 15 years ahead of the embryonic one and there are already some therapies derived from it.

Human Dignity

Father Tad said there are two principal threats to human dignity in this area of science:

Moving the creation of life from the loving embrace to the laboratory bench.

Exploitation of human beings.

The task is to reap the benefits of science without losing human dignity, he said.

Immorality of In Vitro Fertilization

"In Vitro (in glass) Fertilization" is a technology where eggs are fertilized outside a woman's body. This was an important precursor to cloning, said Father Tad.

The immorality of IVF is that it turns the gift of life into mass production, he said. Arguments that IVF is immoral parallel those for cloning.

Children are not intended to be manufactured products. They have a right to have real parents and to be conceived as the fruit of marital love.

This fosters the "eugenic temptation." Not only the Hitlerian, Aryan race type imposed from without, but the consumer driven, everyone-wants-a-perfect-baby version.

It creates undue power over children.

Why do scientists advocate so vociferously for this research, asked Father Tad?

Because the jury is still out about which stem cells are the best to use.

Because science can do it, and they do not want any interference.

The allure of the power of embryonic cells. They feel they are close to the tree of life.

The abortion debate. They want no restrictions.

Morally Irrelevant Distinctions

Father Tad said that proponents of this research use several "morally irrelevant distinctions" to dehumanize the embryos:

The first morally irrelevant distinction is that researchers proclaim that the embryos are not human, but "merely cellular life." You wouldn't eat a Blastocyst as you would eat Caviar, said Father Tad, because you know it is human.

The second morally irrelevant distinction is that of the "womb vs. the test tube." This argument seeks to dehumanize an embryo by implying that the location of the embryo changes the nature of the embryo itself. The test tube does not make it less human, he said.

The third morally irrelevant distinction is the "consent of the donors." According to the "Nuremburg Code of Consent," said Tad, the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. Parents cannot validly give consent aimed at the destruction of their own progeny.

It was "a smokescreen," said Tad, when President Bush announced government money would go only to research on existing cell lines that were derived with the consent of donors.

After Bush's announcement, Joseph Fiorenza, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the decision was "unacceptable."

"The federal government, for the first time in history, will support research that relies on the destruction of some defenseless human beings," said Fiorenza.

The fourth morally irrelevant distinction is "embryo vs. person." This argument says if the embryo is too small, that somehow changes what it is, or in other words, it cannot be a person if it is that small (A Blastocyst can fit on the point of a pin).

The timing of personhood or ensoulment is not essential to the moral question, said Father Tad. Philosophers will always debate that question. It does not matter if personhood occurs at two weeks or two months. The Catholic Church never declared it occurs at conception. The church says it should nevertheless be treated as a human being, because it is on the path to personhood.

"Human life begins at conception" is incorrect, said Father Tad. It is a scientific fact that "human life" can be seen in the egg and the sperm. It is also a scientific declaration, not a religious one that "human beings" always begin at conception. The fact that ensoulment or personhood may come later does not take away the fact that it is already human.

Personhood debates cannot be at the heart of this issue, said Father Tad. There are no solid criteria. God has entrusted into our hands human life to safeguard. Being a human being is not negotiable, it is a scientific given. It is the real criteria to use. The church has shown great wisdom in this matter.

Frozen Embryos

People often ask the church what should be done with the frozen embryos we already have. That is sort of an unfair question, said Father Tad, because the church has always been against this. But people have backed themselves into a corner and now we have hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos.

The church has not come down on it, said Tad, but one view is that we try to adopt out the embryos and have technicians impregnate women with them, but that has its own set of moral problems.

Another view is to look at the embryos maintained in nitrogen as analogous to persons at the very end of their life, being artificially supported by all sorts of instrumentation and apparatuses. We are not morally obliged to provide extraordinary interventions to support those individuals. In a sense, the liquid nitrogen is an extraordinary support to maintain the embryos in a deep freeze. In this view, we should allow the liquid nitrogen to evaporate, let the embryos die a natural death, and insist that no more of them be made.