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³One of the biggest misconceptions about stem-cell research is that the Catholic Church opposes it, said Father
TadeuszPacholczyk, who studied neuroscience at Yale University and theology at Gregorian University in Rome.
On the contrary, he said, the church supports three of the four ways that stem-cell research currently is being
conducted:

-- Adult stem-cell research, involving the growth of stem cells from the patient's own tissue or that of another living
donor.

-- Stem cells developed from umbilical cord blood or placentas after a delivery is completed.

-- Cells from fetal tissue derived from miscarriages (also called spontaneous abortions), as long as the parents give
informed consent.

Only the use of embryonic stem cells, usually harvested from living embryos five to seven days after their creation
in a test tube, is morally unacceptable, because it involves the killing of a human being, he said.´

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³Stem cell research using human embryos might mean new mornings for people like these --
people you and I know by name. If embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) can alleviate such
suffering, then is it not consonant with the Good News?´

³Put more theologically, both pro-life and pro-choice Protestants have agreed that Christians
should assume and hope that even incipient life is indeed life bound for blessing. To bring into
being a human embryo solely in order to divide up its constitutive parts for research threatens
fully to erode the sense that incipient human life is never simply, or primarily, a tool.´

 
  

  
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Mark Waymack "Stem cells stir controversy". National Catholic Reporter. FindArticles.com. 28
Apr, 2011. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_35_37/ai_76997396/

³id not Christ heal and admonish us to heal? Most of us accept a responsibility to care for others,
including those in medical need. Traditionally religious organizations have been active in
providing health care, seeing it as a moral obligation. If then, we see a promising avenue of
medical research, an avenue that could possibly provide comfort, relief and even cure for perhaps
millions of people, do we not have a moral obligation to pursue it?´
³But, given that the primary source for embryonic stem cells is the frozen leftovers from in vitro
fertilization, leftovers that will be destroyed anyway, why not allow something good to come
from them? From this point of view, embryonic stem cell research and use may require
guidelines and oversight, but the compelling obligation to help those individuals who are sick,
and who are fully fledged bearers of moral rights and objects of our moral concern, can easily
override respect for the embryo.´

³Even if we presume that the early embryo counts as an individual with full moral standing, the
answer may still be complicated. We have, as can be seen, conflicting moral obligations. An
obligation to help and an obligation not to kill. An obligation to do good versus an obligation to
do right, so to speak. But which takes precedence?´

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0107.asp

³In the end we will all die anyway, but that gives no one a right to kill us. In any case, these
embryos will not die because they are inherently unable to survive, but because others are
choosing to hand them over for destructive research instead of letting them implant in their
mother¶s womb. One wrong choice does not justify an additional wrong choice to kill them for
research, much less a choice to make taxpayers support such destruction. The idea of
experimenting on human beings because they may die anyway also poses a grave threat to
convicted prisoners, terminally ill patients, and others.´

³Cloning is a depersonalized way to reproduce, in which human beings are manufactured in the
laboratory to preset specifications. It is not a worthy way to bring a new human being into the
world. When done for stem cell research, it involves the moral wrong of all embryonic stem cell
research (destroying an innocent human life for possible benefit to others) plus an additional
wrong: It creates human beings solely in order to kill them for their cells. This is the ultimate
reduction of a fellow human being to a mere means, to an instrument of other people¶s wishes.´

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0102.asp

³Is this ethical? There are actually two ethical questions here: First, is the destruction of the very
early embryo immoral? Second, if a vaccine or tissue is generated from these human embryonic
stem cells, would someone act unethically in using it?´

³And if the egg is fertilized in vitro, one cell can be removed (to have its genetic structure
analyzed) and the developmental process is not harmed. In fact, all the cells of the blastocyst can
be separated and each has the capacity to become a whole human being. This point is clearly
important biologically: These cells can become either a whole organism or be coaxed into
becoming any specialized cell in the body.´

On the basis of the argument that the blastocyst is not yet an individual, some would argue that
while the blastocyst is a living organism, possessing the human genetic code, such an organism
is indeed valuable, but its value is not yet that accorded to a person.
Therefore some would conclude that killing the human blastocyst is not murder because there is
as yet no personal subject to experience that wrong. Such a killing is a disvalue, to be sure, but a
disvalue that might be offset by other positive values, such as health. The conclusion that some
would draw, then, is that at least a case can be made for the use of human embryos in stem-cell
research.

Once again, the Church does not endorse this view. The specific reason for the rejection of this
position is the affirmation that fertilization, the time when egg and sperm merge and form a new
genotype, is considered to be the biological beginning of the new human life. Together with this
affirmation is the correlative presumption that this is the time of the infusion of the soul.
Although there is no official doctrine on this position, the attitude of the Church is that moral
priority should be given to this position.´

³Finally, for use of the research to be immoral, the act of destroying a blastocyst must itself be
immoral. If one follows the line of reasoning that the blastocyst is not yet an individual and,
therefore, not yet a person, its killing would certainly be a disvalue but would not be a moral evil
having the equivalence of murder. Thus individuals would be able to use the clinical products
that come from such research.´




 
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CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is there any chance that these stem cells embryos would become human
beings if not used for the research?

KAHN: Yes, if they were implanted into a woman's uterus, and things went right, then they
would become a baby. That requires a willingness to use them if they're their owned, or donate
them if they're created for the purpose of having a child. But for the vast majority of those
leftover embryos, that will never happen.

CNN: Are any biotech companies or researchers soliciting donors to create these embryos?

KAHN: Certainly researchers. That's the story out today about the Jones Institute. Researchers at
the Jones Institute recruited women to donate eggs, and men to donate sperm for the purpose of
mixing them together to create embryos for the purpose of doing stem cell research on them. Not
for the purpose of reproduction. It's created controversy, because the intention was not to have a
child, as in the case of IVF, but for the express purpose of destroying them in the process of
research. There's a question about whether we need to do that. It's not clear, even after they
published their paper, whether there's any need to do this, given we have an estimate of 200,000
embryos left over from IVF worldwide.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: How many embryonic stem cells would have to be transplanted into a
human to replace an organ or to cure their disease?
KAHN: It turns out that embryonic stem cells are immortal. That is, they'll divide forever. So, in
theory, you would grow an organ in a laboratory and then transplant it into a person's body. You
wouldn't put the cells into a body and have them grow in the right place. That's all very
prospective, and there's a lot of research to be done. This could all change.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_1987022
2_respect-for-human-life_en.html

³The 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.´

³Medical research must refrain from operations on live embryos, unless there is a moral certainty
of not causing harm to the life or integrity of the unborn child and the mother, and on condition
that the parents have givers their free and informed consent to the procedure.´

³To use human embryos or fetuses as the object or instrument of experimentation constitutes a
crime against their dignity as human beings having a right to the same respect that is due to the
child already born and to every human person. ³

³Methods of observation or experimentation which damage or impose grave and

disproportionate risks upon embryos obtained ÷
÷ are morally illicit for the same reasons.
every human being is to be respected for himself, and cannot be reduced in worth to a pure and
simple instrument for the advantage of others.´

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2001/documents/hf_jp-
ii_spe_20010723_president-bush_en.html

³Another area in which political and moral choices have the gravest consequences for the future
of civilization concerns the most fundamental of human rights, the right to life itself. Experience
is already showing how a tragic coarsening of consciences accompanies the assault on innocent
human life in the womb, leading to accommodation and acquiescence in the face of other related
evils such as euthanasia, infanticide and, most recently, proposals for the creation for research
purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the process. A free and virtuous society,
which America aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any
stage from conception until natural death. In defending the right to life, in law and through a
vibrant culture of life, America can show the world the path to a truly humane future, in which
man remains the master, not the product, of his technology.´

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³The fetus, during most of its gestational development, is seen as ³the thigh of its
mother,´and neither men nor women may amputate their thigh at will, because that
would be injuring their bodies, which belong to God. On the other hand, if the
thigh turns gangrenous, both men and women have the positive duty to have their
thigh amputated in order to save their lives. Similarly, if a pregnancy endangers a
woman¶s life or health, an abortion must be performed to save her life or protect
her physical or mental health, for she is without question a full-fledged human
being with all the protections of Jewish law, while the fetus is still only part of the
woman¶s body.´

³Genetic materials outside the uterus have no legal status in Jewish law, for they
are not even a part of a human being until implanted in a woman¶s womb, and even
then, during the first 40 days of gestation, their status is ³as if they were simply
water.´

³Thus, in light of the Jewish view that all human beings are
created in the image of God, regardless of their levels of ability or disability, it is
imperative from a Jewish perspective that the applications of stem cell research be
used for cure and not for enhancement.´ ±









  



 
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³The Judeo-biblical tradition does not grant moral status to an embryo before 40
days of gestation. Such an embryo has the same moral status as male and female
gametes, and its destruction prior to implantation is of the same moral import as
the ³wasting of human seed.´´

³In stem cell research and therapy, the moral obligation to save human life, the
paramount ethical principle in biblical law, supersedes any concern for lowering
the barrier to abortion by making the sin less heinous.´

³But a fence that prevents the cure of fatal diseases must not be erected, for then
the loss is greater than the benefit. In the Judeo-biblical legislative tradition, a
fence that causes pain and suffering is dismantled. Even biblical law is superseded
by the duty to save lives, except for the three cardinal sins of adultery, idolatry, and
murder.´

http://www.ajula.edu/Content/ContentUnit.asp?CID=1713&u=7009&t=0
³The issues raised by stem cell research may be divided into several questions:

1. Is in vitro fertilization permitted to begin with?

2. What is the Jewish approach to abortion?
3. Are pre-embryos included in the prohibition of abortion?
4. May a very early embryo be sacrificed for stem cells that could save lives or
at least cure disease?
5. May we fertilize ova specifically to create an embryo to be sacrificed for stem
cells?
6. Need we make "fences" in the form of protective laws to protect fetuses from
wanton destruction? May tissue from aborted fetuses be used for research or
medical treatment?´

http://www.torah.org/features/secondlook/stemcell.html#

³Judaism has no problem with "playing God," provided we do so according to His

rules as expressed by authentic Jewish legal mandate. Far from being shunned,
"playing God" in the Jewish tradition is, in fact, a religious imperative: the concept
of emulating God is implicit in the mandate to heal and provide effective medical
relief wherever possible.´

³Post-implantation embryonic tissue (that is an embryo already implanted into the

uterine wall) is after all, an early fetus; clearly no sanction would be given to
aborting a fetus in order to obtain stem cell tissue. Even were fetal tissue necessary
to provide life-sustaining therapy for a patient, no sanction would be given to
sacrifice an innocent fetus even in the interest of saving another life. The only
exception to this rule is the obligation to forfeit the life of the "non-innocent" fetus
when its continued existence constitutes a danger to its mother by virtue of the
fetus's pursuer ("rodef") status.´-   
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³Prior to that, while still in a petri dish, or other artificial medium, it cannot
develop into a viable fetus. Therefore such early embryos have no real life
potential at all and they're not considered alive.´- 1
 
 



 
 
 

 



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