Dignitas Personae at Nine Years

Nine years ago yesterday, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s released an instruction on biotechnology, entitled Dignitas Personae. At the time, I made comments on John Allen’s coverage on National Catholic Reporter which NCR did not preserve. I will try to duplicate them here and expand upon them. You can find the article on  https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican-publishes-new-bioethic-paper

The instruction was designed to intervene in any changes President Obama would make in NIH guidelines put forward by President Bush which banned what was mislabeled as embryonic stem cell research. Indeed, Pope Benedict went out of his way to give President Obama a copy when he visited Rome. Obama changed the guidelines anyway to allow stem cell research on cells harvested from blastocysts. None of the research has born fruit, but it was not designed to. Adult cell research survives the filter of gastrulation, so we know the cells harvested are viable. Pre-gastrulation cells are most likely junk. The only value of pre-gastrulation cell research is developing methods for cloning, which is no more shocking to the conscience than making a twin, although a twin won’t have the same personality because it will have different astrology.

The CDF had a great many concerns regarding the human dignity of blastocysts, which are essentially collections of stem cells, all identical, dividing inside a trophoblast, which becomes the placenta. They have no integrity until gastrulation, when the stem cells organize into a person according to the genetics of both parents. Indeed, in stem cell research, the stem cells are not harmed, only the trophoblast. Still, at this point, they are simply cells, not organisms. The CDF list of horribles included: assisted fertility, including but not only in vitro fertilization (they disagreed with anything outside the sex act), destruction of unused zygotes (no, Cardinal, they are not embryos until after gastrulation), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (turkey baster), freezing zygotes (they are not embryos), freezing eggs for later (IVF is more effective), reduction of embryos (which is abortion), preimplantation diagnosis and preventing implantation. You can read the instruction at  http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html

All but embryonic reduction have zero problems in relation to the right to life because prior to gastrulation, the stem cells dividing as individuals in the trophoblast are simply not a human being. Undifferentiated cells have no guiding soul. You can split the trophoblast and take half away and you have twins. The trophoblast functions according to the maternal DNA (and therefore her soul) and is discarded at birth.

Future developments, which until recently were considered science fiction, were also condemned: Gene therapy germ line cell therapy (inheritable gene therapies), genetic engineering, human cloning, stem cell research, chimera (adding human DNA to animal to grow an ear), untraceable tissue harvesting. I discussed stem cell research, including cloning, above. The rest of these will work, will not work or have worked, some will prove therapeutic and their ethical issues will be discussed as the technologies go to market and that discussion will have a wider reach than the troglodytes at the CDF.

The Cardinals at CDF thought all of these procedures immoral because they assumed the stem cells were more than atomized potential beings, and indeed, most of these potential beings are in some way flawed and no child is ever born from them.

Scientists understand this and have no problem with any of these procedures as taking life. While they will not say so directly, it is telling that most will not do anything to interfere with an embryo after gastrulation, at least unless there is something wrong with it, and then many will still not interfere unless that flaw endangers the mother. This is one of those times the Church must listen to science.

The other problem the Cardinals have is their quaint view that all life must begin with a sexual union between a man and a woman and no other form of sexuality is permissible. Such moral idealism serves no one and is likely the result of their celibacy not being a charism but a sexual orientation known as asexuality. Being asexual is fine, but assuming that your asexual hang-ups apply to anyone else is why Ottoviani and Pope Paul VI were laughed out of town when they issued Humanae Vitae. It is why Digitas Personae had one week of fanfare and was never heard from again.

Here is what I said at the time in America Magazine in response to an editorial by Drew Christiansen, SJ entitled  “Science, Technology and the Human Future: A new instruction on bioethics from the Vatican”  https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/681/editorial/science-technology-and-human-future

“The sexual ideal represented in the Congregation's statement is beautiful poetry and idealism. Human sexuality is far more ambiguous, however. While the goal of all sexuality being focused around married conjugal love open to the creation of life is very poetic, there is a point when one must distinguish a poetic aesthetic from natural reasoning, which must be more firmly based in reality then can ever be provided by a celibate Curia which formally held that one cannot say Mass or receive the Eucharist for a period after engaging in conjugal relations. The CDF must be more open to the sciences of both embryology and human sexual behavior to recapture any kind of teaching credibility with what is now a much better educated Catholic populace.”

It is not that I dislike the idea of falling in love, getting married and having children. Most people like that ideal. Gays and lesbians even like that idea. There is simply no need to be fetishistic about the sexuality or the science involved, with the exception of culling children in the womb or eliminating Down’s Children. Of course, if the Church wants to insist on protecting the latter, it must ramp up the respite care for all Down’s families, Catholic or not, as well as adult services for these individuals, with both contributed and dedicated taxpayer funds. Without very obvious assistance, don’t be shocked if families take the path of least resistance.

A few months later, John Allen covered a Vatican Symposium by the Pontifical Academy for Life entitled “New Frontiers of Genetics and the Risk of Eugenics." No loaded language there, eh? The article can be found (sadly without my  comments, and I had been looking for them) at  https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/bioethics-message-lost-vaticans-credibility-gap 

Eugenics used to be an in thing and the Church rightly stood up for the rights of racial minorities (such as Romany) and the mentally disabled to procreate. Sadly, they went from pro-creative choice to the sexual idealism discussed above. Here are the five major criticisms of progress, which I will answer in turn, just as I did almost nine years ago. Hopefully discussion will result.

1. Genetic engineering may compromise human freedom by hard-wiring people toward certain behaviors, attitudes, and life choices. Critics often invoke C.S. Lewis' famous work "The Abolition of Man," in which he argued that the first generation to master genetic technology would become the architect of succeeding generations, thus eradicating "man" in the sense of a free rational agent.

Carl Jung posited racial memory, which could be a kind of genetic predisposition to a certain set of values and abilities. My great-grandfather started the cooperative movement in American agriculture and I am expanding it to industry and making it more socialistic. Nature has been noticing talents running in families for millennia. Using gene therapy to fix asthma, depression or prevent adrenal tumors (likely inherited from a grandmother) won’t stop that.

2. Children may be subject to new forms of exploitation, such as the phenomenon of "savior babies" -- offspring deliberately conceived in order to provide genetic materials for siblings or other family members, obviously without informed consent.

Healthy children have been transplanting healthy tissue to sick children since transplants have been invented. Usually it saves lives in leukemia in a bone marrow transplant. The promise of genetic engineering is taking stem cells from the patient, modifying them and letting them be their own donor. Are intra-family donations complicated? Sure. But they always were.

3. "Genetic profiling" could lead to new forms of discrimination in health care, insurance, employment, housing, and other sectors, as the rights of genetic "undesirables" are progressively curtailed.

No doubt about this one, which is why we need single-payer health care, British style national-health service or employer provided doctors in employee-owned companies which provide housing and which boldly stand for equality as more socialist employers will do. Public law should also provide protection and much more vigorous enforcement. In cases where a genetic condition is a bar to employment, disability payments should be much more generous, guaranteeing an advanced urban lifestyle for those rejected from the daily grind. Sadly, conservatives will object to the disability stipends more than the discrimination.

4. The high cost of genetic enhancement will likely mean that only the rich will be able to afford it. As a result, inequality will be deliberately encoded in our genes -- a prospect some refer to as "genetic apartheid". The children of the rich will not only be richer, but stronger, faster, better-looking, and smarter.

Again, with decent single-payer, public health or employer provided health, all families will be rich enough for therapy. Again, the conservatives will object to the free therapy more than they oppose unequal enhancement.

5. Genetic selection may disrupt human ecology. One already sees this potential in India and China, where widespread use of cheap ultrasound technology has led parents to abort female children at a much higher rate because they're perceived as less desirable. The natural sex ratio is about 105 boys for 100 girls, but in India today it's 113 boys for every 100 girls, and in some regions it's as high as 156 boys per 100 girls. In China, the sex ratio has gone as high as 120 boys for every 100 girls, which among other things could mean that a fifth of Chinese men won't be able to marry for lack of available mates.

This is a self-correcting problem. While some men without women have chased the prospect of their virgins in paradise after acts of jihad, most will simply realize that it’s time to quit aborting girls. Such societies need revolution for other reasons having to do with the rights of women and workers. Genetic selection is a symptom.