THE IRISH Government, the EU and, implicitly, University College Cork have been accused by the Catholic Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray of being motivated by profit rather than ethics in their support for stem cell research that involves embryos.
Meanwhile Dr Phil Boyle, a fertility specialist at the Galway Clinic, has said that the use of treatments such intrauterine insemination, IVF and ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) “are all morally illicit and should be avoided by all Catholics, patients and doctors alike”.
Both were speaking in the context of the publication by the Vatican yesterday of Dignitas Personae (The Dignity of the Person), an “instruction on certain bioethical questions”.
Chairman of the Irish Bishops’ consultative group on bioethics, Bishop Murray said: “It worries me enormously that in the European Union, in the actions of our Government, and in the actions of institutions in Ireland, the driving force [where embryonic stem cell research is concerned] appears to be economic, economics, profit, not ethical considerations about what kind of world we are creating or what kind of respect we are showing to other members of our race when we use them in order to produce treatments which have not yet appeared and may not appear as adult stem cells are as promising.”
Bishop Murray said Dignitas Personae was necessary at this time as “it was felt something new needed to be written on the subject in the context of ongoing developments ”.
He said the document underlined “the respect due human life at every stage from the moment of conception”.
It also emphasised that the proper context for procreation was “the committed love of a couple in marriage” and that ethical research should be encouraged and widely shared.
“It’s not just for rich countries,’’ he said.
He pointed out that all progress to date made where stem cell research was concerned had involved the use of adult stem cells which the church favoured. Its concern was with those situations where embryos, “young human beings”, were destroyed, he said.
Dr Boyle said the document impressed on people that, in arriving at decisions on fertility treatments, you should “make a choice in keeping with your dignity as a son or daughter of God”.
There were, he said, “certain boundaries which if you cross you are going to be damaged and which are going to be hurtful to you and the possible children you may wish to conceive”.
Those who wished to pursue fertility treatment “should be married’’, he said. They must respect human life from the moment of conception and such conception “must occur through the normal act of intercourse”.
The document was welcomed by the Iona Institute “for emphasising the right a child conceived via AHR [assisted human reproduction] to be raised by their own biological mother and father”.
The Pro-Life Campaign also welcomed it, “for its clarity and defence of human dignity, particularly in the area addressing destructive research on living human embryos.’’
Dignitas Personae is available at www.catholicbishops.ie. It was released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
