The Vatican's radical minority response to a Nobel Prize
October 5th 2010 07:03
:
Vyoos
Robert Edwards, British scientist, IVF pioneer and Nobel Laureate
VYOOS EDITORIAL
Has everyone in the Vatican drowned on the tide of negative sentiment washing over the place? If there is anyone there trying to return some polish to the tarnished brand that is the Roman Catholic Church, they aren't rubbing hard enough.
That includes Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, who heads of the Pontifical Academy for Life. The splendidly-named body speaks for the Vatican on medical ethics.
de Paula today spoke for himself, he claims, when he painted 85-year-old Robert Geoffrey Edwards, the British physiologist and pioneer in reproductive medicine, as some sort of force for evil.
Edwards was yesterday awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work developing in-vitro fertilization, the process which has made parenthood possible for millions of infertile people.
This, said de Paula, was "completely out of order".
"Without Edwards, there would not be a market on which millions of ovocytes are sold ... and there would not be a large number of freezers filled with embryos in the world.
"In the best of cases they are transferred into a uterus, but most probably they will end up abandoned or dead, which is a problem for which the new Nobel Prize winner is responsible,'' the bishop told Italy's ANSA news agency.
de Paula later claimed he was speaking for himself and not the Vatican, an interesting claim from a man whose position makes him the official mouthpiece of the Holy See on medical ethics issues.
The Nobel committee hailed Edwards' work as a "milestone in the development of modern medicine''. And one of the first people to congratulate him was Louise Brown, the first ever "test tube baby". Clearly, she wouldn't be alive if Bishop de Paula had his way.
The truth of this debate lies beyond religious and ethical considerations. What Robert Edwards did was what any scientist must do - explore, with the aim of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
He broke no laws of the land. He pushed the boundaries of understanding a very long way indeed. And his research brought happiness, not to mention life, to many families.
The Vatican is free to express its views. In a democracy, all minorities can be heard. But please, Bishop de Paula, understand that the freedom of scientific research has no less an imperative than the freedom of speech.
If you don't like the systems, processes and realities which have developed around IVF practices, then say so, and address those issues directly. Attacking the individual as you have done is as naive as it is radical. You, like the Roman Catholic Church, need more polish.
smh.com.au
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Comment by Norm
Consumption Malfunction
Equal and Opposite
Arses and Elbows
Footy Power
Brrrp-brrp. Hello. One word. Sounds like. Busted..
Comment by Chris Champion
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
The Blog of Lists
Newly Old
Money Whither
Comment by Norm
Consumption Malfunction
Equal and Opposite
Arses and Elbows
Footy Power
Comment by Chris Champion
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
The Blog of Lists
Newly Old
Money Whither
Mustard rhymes with busted.