Alex Reich
Junior Theology
Catholic Position Paper
April 30, 2008
FETAL STEM CELL RESEARCH
The
The
1. It is morally wrong to use living human embryos for producing ES cells (thought to cure diseases), because:
A) From conception, the embryo is a human person which is growing and developing and it cannot be called just a simple mass of cells.
B) Every human has a right to its own life, therefore any act trying to end that life is violating that right.
C) When somebody tries to change one part of the embryo, which immediately and critically hurts the cell, they are committing a gravely immoral and illicit act.
D) Trying to use this kind of act for good is still immoral: “the ends do not justify the means”
E) The Magistereum
clearly states the following: The Church has always taught and continues to teach
that the result of human procreation, from the first moment of its existence,
must be guaranteed that unconditional respect which is morally due to the human
being in his or her totality and unity in body and spirit. The human being is
to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and
therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized,
among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every innocent human
being to life.
2. It is immoral to engage in Atherapeutic
cloning by producing cloned embryos and destroying them after to create ES
cells—every type of therapeutic cloning
is immoral because it involves producing human embryos and then destroying them
in order to obtain stem cells.
3. It is also immoral to use ES cells and the cells
obtained from them which are supplied by researchers and are commercially
obtainable, because it is just as much the consumer’s fault as it is the
producer of the cell’s.
*The
The USCCB clearly
states that the Catholic Church is opposed to fetal stem cell research because
harvesting cells kills the living human embryo and the
Church opposes the direct destruction of innocent human life for any purpose,
including research. The Church feels scientists have no right to experiment on human
life because nobody has the right to kill somebody else, not even for research.
According to the Church, this also poses a threat for the terminally ill and
convicted. The Church calls everyone to respect the lives of embryos and the
lives of suffering patients equally.
AmericanCatholic.org
Fetal stem cells are thrown away after one is planted into a woman’s uterus. The Church feels strongly against this because these cells should not be simply thrown away. The Church feels that human life is created but deliberately prevented from reaching its full potential. In his 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II wrote: “Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and are subjects with rights; their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence. It is immoral to produce human embryos destined to be exploited as disposable 'biological material”.