Category: Making Sense of Bioethics

Most people fear the process of dying, which involves radical dependency, a sense of powerlessness, and sometimes significant pain as well.

Human pregnancy begins whenever a sperm unites with an egg inside the fallopian tube. The newly-minted embryo must then travel along the fallopian tube during the next few days before finally implanting into the wall of the mother’s uterus.

In rare instances, the embryo will fail to reach the uterus and will instead implant in the fallopian tube along the way, which is a very narrow tube not designed to support a pregnancy.

Mitochondria are small, elongated structures in a cell that produce energy. These “cellular batteries” contain their own small piece of DNA, separate from the rest of the cell’s DNA found in the nucleus.

When defects or mutations occur in this mitochondrial DNA, it can result in a number of diseases. In severe cases, children can be born blind, epileptic, unable to crawl, and may manifest severe neurological delay and die at an early age. No real therapies exist for most mitochondrial diseases beyond treating the symptoms.

Human beings naturally recoil at the prospect of pain and suffering. When a sharp object pokes us, we instinctively pull away. When the unpleasant neighbor comes up on caller ID, we recoil from answering the phone. Our initial response is to avoid noxious stimuli and pain, similar to most animals.

Yet when dealing with painful or unpleasant situations, we can also respond deliberately and in ways that radically differentiate us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the United States in April of 2008, I had the chance to attend the opening ceremony at the White House South Lawn.

As I listened to President Bush’s welcoming remarks to the pope, I was caught off guard by one line in particular, a powerful statement that seemed almost too philosophical to be spoken by a United States president: “In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism and embrace a culture of justice and truth.”

When I give talks on stem cell research or in vitro fertilization, people invariably ask, “What should be done with all the frozen embryos?”

It is usually asked with a sense of urgency, even desperation, as they reflect on the fate of the hundreds of thousands of human embryos cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen at fertility clinics.

President Obama, on March 9, 2009, signed an important executive order that vastly expanded federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research and crossed a significant and troubling ethical line.

This decision, and the rhetoric during the signing, encouraged scientists and researchers to enter the moral quagmire of taking some human lives in order to benefit others. During his signing speech, in order to support his decision, the president invoked the name of Christopher Reeve and other patients desperate to find cures for their ailments.

Desperation, however, rarely makes for good ethics.

I once heard a true story that brought this point home for me in a dramatic way. The story involved a father and his two young sons.

One recurrent theme in bioethical discussions is the idea that each of us possesses a basic awareness of the moral law. This distinctly human faculty, which Western culture has referred to as “conscience,” helps us to choose correctly when confronted with basic moral decisions.

Even children, when taught about right and wrong, instinctively seem to recognize a law higher than themselves. Deep within his conscience man discovers that law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Conscience has been aptly described as man’s most secret core and his sanctuary.

Over the years, a number of unjust laws have come to be replaced by more just ones. Laws overturning the practice of slavery, for example, were a significant step forward in promoting justice and basic human rights in society.

Yet in recent times, unjust and immoral laws have, with increasing frequency, come to replace sound and reasonable ones, particularly in the area of sexual morality, bioethics, and the protection of human life.

Various medical conditions can affect a woman’s ability to carry a pregnancy and, at times, even threaten her and her child’s life.

Some of these conditions include pulmonary hypertension, Marfan’s syndrome, and certain congenital problems with the aorta. When a doctor informs a woman that she cannot become pregnant in the future without serious consequences to herself and her baby, having her tubes tied might seem to be the most appropriate response. Some would further argue that since the sterilization would be for “medical reasons,” it would be an “indirect sterilization” and therefore morally acceptable.