It is as inevitable as the passing of time. Once there is a new pope, the world begins to wonder when the Catholic Church is going to leave its "medieval thinking" behind and join the "modern" age. It is the 21st century after all, and the Church needs to stop being so "backward."
I am a cradle Catholic, and, when I was young, I subconsciously believed that the Church was "behind the times" and "out of touch."
As I began my career and worked in cutting-edge biotech laboratories, there was always a nagging question: How can my Church, so rooted in the past, have something relevant to say about modern technologies like stem-cell research, cloning and genetic engineering that are coming in the future?
Then I began researching these technologies and discovered something that changed the way I viewed my Church and my faith. Elbow deep in the latest biotechnology news, I discovered that the Church was far from backward, out of touch and irrelevant.
It is the most forward-thinking institution I have ever encountered — and more relevant today than ever.
My good friend Chelsea Zimmerman at Reflections of a Paralytic has interviewed me for Support a Catholic Speaker Month. It was our first time out using Skype and doing an on-line interview so the sound isn't always the best and my head is gigantic (note to self: sit back from the camera) but all in all I think we did a great job. Check it out:
Several years ago, I remember watching a story on the efforts to save India's gharial crocodile. On the verge of extinction, it is the most endangered crocodile on the planet. After sending out thousands of gharials into the wild, only 200 breeding adults are left. I remember marveling at the lengths the researchers and volunteers were going to save this prickly, yet majestic animal.
And then I asked myself, "Why?" If the gharial crocodile is just a product of random mutations and that were selected by nature, why would anyone try and save it? Why not let natural selection take its course and let the gharial go extinct? In our creation-free, science-only mindset, why were we not celebrating the extinction of the gharial? I mean, some other species will adapt and take its place in the ecosystem; Darwin's natural selection once again proved. That is cause for celebration right?
And yet conservation efforts by humans abound. Why? Why try and subvert the process of natural selection? Some would say it is because humans are causing the extinction of these species. But if we are better adapted to our environment and the gharials can't adapt well enough to deal with us, then why not let them die out. Is it not the survival of the fittest? Are humans not the species able to adapt to nearly any environment? Are we not the most fit to survive just about anywhere? Then why do we care about species that can't make it on their own?
And yet even the most die-hard Darwinian atheist would applaud the conservation efforts of anyone trying to save an endangered species. Why? I believe it is because humans inherently know that we are charged with being the curators of God's creation. We are meant to protect and preseve our environment because it has inherent value beyond simple randomness. We want to and should save the gharial crocodile because that is our charge. We know it even if we do not believe that there is a Creator that has given us that charge.
I think caring for our environment and the other species in it goes beyond just a desire to preserve our habitat, I think it is a hard wired understanding that humans have been entrusted with caring for this planet and everything on it. And we better not screw it up.
And yet the radical environmentalism that has surfaced in that last decade has taken a scary departure from this idea. Instead of trying to protect and preserve nature, there is a growing meme that it is the human that needs to go extinct. We have to get rid of ourselves in order that nature survive. Many environmental types truly believe that the planet would be a better place without us and they want us gone. Some range from just asking that we voluntarily do not have children, some want to implement a global one-child policy like China, and some hope for an outbreak of a virus like Ebola to get rid of what they see as a plague on the Earth.
Human beings no longer have any use for themselves; they would prefer to put themselves out of the way so that nature might be well again. But this is not how to bring healing to the world, for we go against the Creator when we no longer want to exist as the human beings that he wanted to exist. It is not thus that we heal nature, but rather thus that we destroy ourselves and creation by removing from it the hope that lies in it and the greatness to which it is called.
In a time where religion is often portrayed as an enemy of truth, it is nice to be reminded that in Nazi Germany, it was not the newspapers or universities that had the courage to stand against Hitler. Instead, it was the Church. From Time magazine December 23, 1940, Albert Einstein speaks about the Church's resistance in Nazi Germany:
"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. . . .
"Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."
The Church today still stands for intellectual truth and moral freedom. Although the propaganda that surrounds us says otherwise. But it is the Church that speaks for the human embryo that is frozen, sold, discarded or torn apart for harvestable biological material. It is the Church that reminds us that we all began our lives as small as the period at the end of this sentence and our size does not diminish our worth. It is the Church that stands firm against the creation and manipulation of human life in the laboratory. It is the Church that speaks out against the seek-and-destroy mission going on in the womb against those that are not deemed "genetically fit." The truth is that when the Church stands for the embryo and fetus, it stands for the inherent dignity in every human life regardless of DNA or point of development.
The Nazi's dehumanized the Jews and other "undesirables" and the Church stood for them, however imperfectly. Now the Church is nearly alone in standing for the youngest and most voiceless members of our species. Those that many have gone to great lengths to insist are not human. We know better. I pray that those who despise the Church today will see in the future what the Church has done to protect the most vulnerable and innocent of lives and will praise it unreservedly as Einstein did.
Fiction is as instructive as non-fiction, maybe even more so. The best fiction catches us up in a world outside our own all the while teaching us truths about ourselves and humanity. The pleasure of reading a great story cements those truths into the deepest corners of our mind. Dean Koontz has been quietly reeducating the masses for years. Now there is Brian J. Gail and his trilogy Fatherless, Motherless, and Childless. I have just finished Fatherless and Motherless and am eagerly awaiting the release of Childless scheduled for this fall.
Brian J. Gail's trilogy is uniquely Catholic taking on the American sacred cows of contraception in Fatherless and IVF and embryo destructive research in Motherless. Through Father John Sweeney, the reader discovers the destructive nature of the Pill, the evils of creating life in a dish and the transhumanist underpinnings of embryonic stem cell research. The characters are real Catholics faced with real problems. True to life, Gail's characters make their decisions in the face of life's dilemmas and their choices reverberate through their spiritual lives. Gail is clearly a business man with many passages in both novels taking place in New York board rooms. I admit I sometimes felt lost amongst the business speak, but Gail depicts a reality: that many of our current moral conundrums originated with decisions made by powerful businessmen willing to obscure the truth to maximize profits.
Fatherless and Motherless go beyond the obvious and address issues that lay hidden in the background. One is the lack of leadership from our priests and bishops. Gail is courageous to write about what many Catholics feel but are afraid to articulate: we are hungry for guidance but many of our religious lack the courage to tell us the truth and lead us to spiritual food and water. I feel this acutely when I am invited to speak at a parish on genetic engineering or genetic testing or cloning and the priest does not attend. Attendees are always shocked about how much they did not know about topics they thought they understood. They nearly always lament, "Too bad Father wasn't here for this." In fact, of the dozens of presentations that I have given, only 2 priests have attended. One busted in halfway through and then, when it was over, proceeded to scold me about all the things I didn't discuss. The first time I offered to give a presentation on stem cell research during the height of the stem cell debates, one pastor quickly interrupted me and said, "Well I am no theologian, go talk to Father C." I went to Father C. He looked at me like I had a third eye growing out of my forehead and, like a hot potato, passed me off to the parish education coordinator. She told me to talk to the Knights of Columbus.
I believe there is something for every Catholic in Gail's trilogy, well unless you are a Cafeteria Catholic. Then you will find Fatherless and Motherless a scathing indictment of either your ignorance or your arrogance depending on what ails you. Childless will probably deliver a similar smackdown. I can't wait!
Until then, I found this video of Gail speaking in London at Westminster. I couldn't stop watching. He is a fantastic orator as well as author.
When I started Mary Meets Dolly nearly 6 years ago, I was one of the uneducated masses that unconsciously believed the stereotype that my Church was stuck in the past; that the Catholic Church was behind the times. In the months of research that it took me to get up to speed on biotechnology and the Church's teaching, I discovered something that changed my life. I discovered that my Church was not backward at all. In fact it was more forward thinking that any another institution I had ever encountered. (And having performed DNA sequencing for Nobel Prize winning labs, that is saying something.) The writings of Pope Paul VI's Humane Vitae back in 1968 spoke directly to the moral conundrums we face today with stem cell research and cloning. If society had listened, we would not have nearly half a million frozen human embryos that researchers cannot wait to rip apart. If society had listened, we wouldn't be cloning embryos with cow, rabbit and mouse eggs in a vain effort to live forever. If society had listened, those with genetic abnormalities would not be seen as second class citizens and promptly killed in the womb or tossed in the fertility clinic trash. If society had listened, 163 million girls would not have been killed in sex selective abortion. With crystal ball-like clarity, the Church warned us of the evils of separating the natural pairing of procreation and sex. If only we had listened. While I was elbow deep in books from non-Catholic scientists, reporters, and lawyers, I found the wisdom of my Church and was overcome with joy that the Church was still here to guide us.
That is why this news saddens me so. A survey done by researchers at the University of Reno have found that Catholics are not listening to their Church when it comes to stem cell research and cloning. From Nevada Today (warning this article says the therapeutic cloning is banned in the U.S. when it is not):
Evans, a sociologist, also found it interesting that the majority of respondents trusted their own judgment most when deciding on their approval or disapproval on stem cell research issues, rather than looking to their church or other authorities, such as governmental ethics committees.
“The vast majority, over two-thirds, said that in deciding whether it is right to allow these treatments, they would follow their own judgment,” she said. “Only 4 percent gave greater moral weight to the Catholic Church than to themselves, and even among committed church-going Catholics, only about one in five defer to the church on these matters.”
The study also revealed that despite the Catholic Church’s firm opposition, support for the use of stem cell research for the cure or treatment of serious diseases was almost as strong among Catholic laity as among Protestants.
I have no doubt that most Catholics polled had no idea what their Church's teaching is on stem cell research and that the polling questions were written to evoke a particular answer. But the fact that 1 in 5 Catholics would not look to their Church for guidance on such complex issues is heartbreaking. Catholic teaching on issues of biotechnology is consistent, wise and will allow us to control technology instead of it controlling us. Without Church teaching on things like genetic engineering, I fear the human race is doomed to be slaves to the technology it creates. The hard part it getting our fellow Catholics, and the rest of society, to understand the forwarding-thinking wisdom of the Church.
Today in 1926, premier geneticist Jérôme Lejeune was born. Lejeune found the genetic cause of Down Syndrome. He was a ardent Catholic and spent his life trying to protect the many innocent lives with Trisomy 21. He died on April 3, 1994. In honor of Jérôme Lejeune, I am going to repost the story of the day my own father met this great and influential Catholic scientist. The following is my father's recollections of a man who was not only a great man of science, but also a man of great faith:
Conversing with Jérôme Lejeune
In June 1978, I drove Dr. Jérôme Lejeune from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, where he was to give a major address at an international conference. I knew Dr. Lejeune only by reputation: pediatrician specializing in the treatment of children with chromosomal anomalies and renowned geneticist who had discovered the cause of Down’s syndrome some 20 years earlier. At the time I met him, he was professor of Genetics at the University of René Descartes in Paris. Until his death in 1994, he would focus his work and research on preventing and treating Trisomy 21, the cause of Down’s syndrome.
Prior to heading northwest to St. John’s, we stopped at the University of Minnesota where Dr, Lejeune was scheduled to give a lecture to medical students on the intricate elegance of DNA and RNA. He was obviously in his element—a quiet confidence and wonderful sense of humor underlay his love and gift for sharing an enormously complex, microcosmic world. At the close, the students showed their appreciation by clapping beyond the norm.
Back on the road, he asked about my life and work at St. John’s University and seemed genuinely interested in my responses. But, I wanted to talk about infinitely more interesting things, to wit, his life and research. After graduate school (in theology), I had taken two years of pre-med and could ask basic scientific questions, so I did. What ensued was a fascinating tour of the beginnings of human life: helical structures, DNA replication, the unbelievably sophisticated world of genetics.
Over many years of chromosomal research, Dr. Lejeune said he had come to the awareness that our human building blocks/structures could not have come to be by chance. For him, the pattern was too singular, too reasonable, too amazingly elegant to come from molecular randomness. And he expressed the hope that someday he would be able to elucidate more the intricate mathematical and physiological “formulae” behind the design itself.
For the next hour and a half, I soaked up as much as I could. What impressed me more than Dr. Lejeune’s knowledge, was his person. He was passionate without being the least pedantic. He obviously loved life, at every level. At no time was he ever patronizing. Indeed, he was enthusiastic and completely at ease talking about mundane stuff. He was completely engaged and therefore engaging. Every now and then he would let his French sense of humor bubble to the surface. At one point, with a wry smile and eyes twinkling, he quipped that his house in Paris was older than the United States. He had gauged me correctly—I responded with a loud guffaw and a “put ’em up” look.
Dr. Lejeune was a man of faith. Indeed, he exuded faith… in life, in science, in God. He saw no barriers, no compartments, no built-in contradictions amidst “levels” of reality, from the biological to the spiritual.
Suddenly, we were at St. John’s; an hour and a half drive in just about a minute and a half. An unforgettable ride at warp speed.
A few months back I was contact by Alexandra Pajak, a Catholic composer of DNA music, about her album Sounds of HIV. The album is now available on Amazon.com and I highly recommend checking it out and purchasing it as Alexandra is donating some of the proceeds to the Emory University Vaccine Center toward AIDS research.
What is DNA music you say? Alexandra has translated the DNA and protein sequences of HIV into music. Ingenious. Here is how she did it. From the liner notes of her CD:
Sounds of HIV is a musical translation of the genetic code of HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Every segment of the virus is assigned musical pitches that correspond to the segment’s scientific properties. In this way, the sounds reflect the true nature of the virus. When listening from beginning to end, the listener hears the entire genome of HIV.
DNA is made of nucleotides. There are four types of nucleotides in DNA: adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine. Scientists abbreviate the nucleotides with the letters A, C, T, and G. Three nucleotides next to each other code for different amino acids. For example, if three Cytosines are in a line (c-c-c), they will tell a cell to make a different amino acid than if two cytosines and one adenine are in a line next to one another (c-c-a). There are 20 amino acids, which each have many physical properties.
The music in “Sounds of HIV” is based on the DNA of the virus upon entry into the human body.
DNA-based music is music in which the natural chemical properties of DNA is translated into music. In English, the nucleotides adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine are abbreviated with the letters a, c, t, and g, respectively. Since A, C, and G are also musical pitches in the Western melodic scale, these pitches were assigned to the matching nucleotides. To form two perfect fifths (C-G and D-A), “D” was arbitrarily assigned to musically represent thymine. The notes of the A minor scale have been assigned to the amino acids based on their level of attraction to water.
On Sounds of HIV, depending on the track, nucleotides and/or amino acids “play” as music. Tracks 1 and 10 are based on the first and last nucleotides of the DNA chain. Tracks 2-9 “play” the proteins and sometimes the nucleotides on top of the proteins.
Here is an example from the Postlude. Only nucleotides are performed in this track. The treble part plays the nucleotides, and some chords were added in the bass part for some harmonic interest. The nucleotides cytosine, thymine, guanine, and adenine are represented by c, t, g, and a respectively:
Protein 3 stands as perhaps the most linear example of what the amino acids sound like when played from beginning to end. Every pitch represents an amino acid. No additional pitches have been added.
The proteins methionine, glutamic acid, asparagine, arginine, tryptophan, glutamine, and valine are represented by M, E, N, R, W, Q, and V respectively.
I have been meaning to blog aboutThe Catholic Laboratory for awhile. The Catholic Laboratory is a site focused on what "the Church has done and continues to do for science." There are great podcasts, resources and all kinds of neat information about Catholics in science.
Yesterday, The Catholic Laboratory pointed out that the new electric car the Chevrolet Volt was named after Catholic scientist Alessandro Volta and the Vauxhall Ampera, is named after André-Marie Ampère.
WHAT is the universe made of? Matter or energy? Particles or strings? According to physicist Vlatko Vedral's appealing new book, it is made, at bottom, of information.
In other words, if you break the universe into smaller and smaller pieces, the smallest pieces are, in fact, bits.
With this theme in mind, Vedral embarks on an exuberant romp through physics, biology, philosophy, religion and even personal finance. By turns irreverent, erudite and funny, Decoding Reality is - by the standard of books that require their readers to know what a logarithm is - a ripping good read.
A bit is the tiniest unit of information. It represents the distinction between two possibilities: yes or no, true or false, zero or one. The word "bit" also refers to the physical system representing that information: in your computer's hard drive, for example, a bit is registered by a minuscule magnet whose north pole can point up or down....
In Decoding Reality, Vedral argues that we should regard the entire universe as a gigantic quantum computer. Wacky as that may sound, it is backed up by hard science. The laws of physics show that it is not only possible for electrons to store and flip bits: it is mandatory. For more than a decade, quantum-information scientists have been working to determine just how the universe processes information at the most microscopic scale.
So the universe is a computer, but no scientist can mention the possibility that this computer was designed in anyway because that would be "unscientific." Crazy.
I read. A lot. I have been known to average a novel a day. What slows me down is a lack of good books to read. Thank goodness for Dean Koontz who is quickly becoming one of my favorites. His recent works are great. I began with the gruesome but thought provoking The Taking, continued on to the dark, but wholly funny and entertaining, Life Expectancy and then on to the Odd Thomas series. Now I am hooked.
Your Heart Belongs to Me, one of his most recent, captured the creepy love affair with death that is the assisted suicide movement like no other fiction book I have ever read.
Yesterday , I started his Frankenstein trilogy which is about transhumanism, the movement to genetically enhance mankind to be better than human in intelligence, strength or beauty. I will let you know how it is. I was immediately struck by the dedication which had so much truth in it I just had to share it:
This trilogy is dedicated to the late Mr. Lewis, who long ago realized that science was being politicized, that its primary goal was changing from knowledge to power, that it was also becoming scientism, and that in the ism is the end of humanity.
The Mr. Lewis is of course C.S. Lewis. I won't try to elaborate on Koontz's dedication because I think it reflects the dangers of turning science into a religion perfectly.
Being that I just taught the evolution chapter to my home school biology class of Catholic high schoolers and we discussed "young earth creationism", I got a kick out of this from Patrick at the Creative Minority Report:
From the very funny Failblog comes this little diddy. Some kids are going on a field trip the Rocks and Mineral Festival (BYOB by the way). In order to attend the lil tykes need to have a permission slip. This is how one came back.
The note reads:
“Note: Just to let you it is not that we don’t believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay ‘Rock and Minerals’ but it might not be 5 pages long, and about billions of years, it will be according to the Bible.”
The best part is that if you look at the picture, she signed the permission slip. Its not that I don't believe in misleading my children its just that I don't believe in misleading my children but they can go anyway. Or something.
I am just wondering how well the Bible would serve as a reference for an essay on rock and minerals. Good luck with that.
Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Francis Collins, the new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. This appointment may raise a few eyebrows because Collins is in favour of using left-over IVF embryos for embryonic stem cell research. Collins also believes that an embryo made by somatic cell nuclear transfer or cloning is fundamentally different from an embryo made from egg and sperm even though animal embryos created with cloning grow into adult animals all the time. Collins argues that because cloned embryos are different, it is morally permissible to create and destroy them for research.
The Catholic Church rejects both of these views. So why would the Pope appoint Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences? Does this foreshadow a change in the Church's teaching on cloning and embryonic stem cell research? Should Catholics be troubled by this appointment?
Absolutely not. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is a body that is charged with giving the Vatican the most up to date, most scientifically accurate information regardless of religious (or non-religious) affiliation. It was established by Pope Pius XI in 1936 to promote the sciences and its members are some of the most heavy-hitting, Nobel-prize winning scientists of the 20th century, many of whom probably disagree with the Church on a great many things. From The Pontifical Academy of Sciences: A Historical Profile by Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo:
The Academy is an independent body within the Holy See and enjoys freedom of research. Although its rebirth was the result of an initiative promoted by the Roman Pontiff and it is under the direct protection of the ruling Pope, it organises its own activities in an autonomous way in line with the goals which are set out in its statutes:
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences has as its goal the promotion of the progress of the mathematical, physical and natural sciences, and the study of related epistemological questions and issues.1
Its deliberations and the studies it engages in, like the membership of its Academicians, are not influenced by factors of a national, political or religious character. For this reason, the Academy is a valuable source of objective scientific information which is made available to the Holy See and to the international scientific community....
The new members of the Academy are elected by the body of Academicians and are chosen from men and women of every race and religion on the basis of the high scientific value of their activities and their high moral profile. They are then officially appointed by the Roman Pontiff.
Francis Collins certainly has the scientific credentials to be appointed to such an academic body. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences focuses on 6 major areas:
a) fundamental science; b) the science and technology of global questions and issues; c) science in favour of the problems of the ThirdWorld; d) the ethics and politics of science; e) bioethics; and f) epistemology. The disciplines involved are sub-divided into nine fields: the disciplines of physics and related disciplines; astronomy; chemistry; the earth and environment sciences; the life sciences (botany, agronomy, zoology, genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, the neurosciences, surgery); mathematics; the applied sciences; and the philosophy and history of sciences.
Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences include Stephen Hawking, (an agnostic who also supports ESC research), and many Nobel Prize winners including Werner Arber, who discovered restriction endonucleases, David Baltimore, who discovered reverse transcriptase, and and Paul Berg who shared his Nobel with Gilbert and Sanger for work on nucleic acids. You bio-geeks out there know what I am talking about.
The Academy also tackles some of the most difficult scientific and moral discussions we face today. They convene "study weeks" in which they address topics most people would rather run away from. Recently, study weeks have addressed signs of death, evolution, genetic engineering of plants, climate change and the cultural values of science.
Even though Francis Collins differs from Church teaching on sanctity of the beginnings of human life, that certainly does not disqualify him from giving the Church his scientific knowledge on genetics. Benedict has appointed a first-rate geneticist to his heavy hitting Academy of Sciences.
Sometimes scientists make me laugh. I have no problem with evolution as a theory as long as it is not used to "explain" things beyond its scope. The theory of evolution does not negate the possibility that the universe was created by a higher power.
Evolution is often described by scientists as something that has liberated mankind from the tyranny of religion. Imagine my surprise when I found this quote from a synthetic biologist talking about, of all things, the tyranny of evolution. Biopolitical Times has excerpts of an interview with Drew Endy, a Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, where Endy muses:
Synthetic biologists are convinced that, with enough knowledge, they will be able to write programs to control those genetic components, programs that would let them not only alter nature but guide human evolution as well....
“What if we could liberate ourselves from the tyranny of evolution by being able to design our own offspring?”
So let me get this straight. According to evolutionists, humans are not exceptional. We are just animals that have evolved from other animals. The product of random mutations that occurred over millions of years. Things like social behavior and monogamy and love can all be explained away by evolutionary biology. This liberates us from the tyranny of religion and morals and other non-scientific stuff. Yet, at the same time, we have the potential to guide our own evolution, unlike any other species. At this point, the randomness of evolution itself becomes a tyranny.
Wait. I think I am getting it: Something that stands in the way of science doing whatever it wants, whether that be religion or nature, is a tyranny. Yep. Got it.
Earlier this year the Associated Press reported that Germany is going to pass strict rules on genetic testing. The new regulations state that only doctors can order genetic tests. This basically outlaws any direct-to-consumer or DTC genetic testing. This means that if a person wants to know anything about their genetic make-up, they have to go through a doctor. These regulations also prohibit prenatal tests for anything other than medical reasons. So parents would be barred from using genetic testing to find out the sex of their child or to determine if their child has a genetic predisposition to adult disease.
The reason Germany has put such restrictive laws in place is clear. The specter of the eugenics movement that set the Holocaust in motion is still fresh in the German psyche. They are trying to put the brakes on a new eugenics movement that puts humans, especially the unborn, at risk of being marginalized as "defective" or "undesirable" because their genetics.
It is a noble goal, but the execution is flawed. I agree with Daniel MacArthur at Genetic Future. This is a misguided attempt at controlling genetic discrimination. But my reasons are a bit different.
The real problem here is not the really the testing. It is the way the testing is used by a society that does not uphold the sanctity of life. The government is clearly worried about parents using information like sex and genetic predisposition to things like obesity and cancer to abort their children if they are undesirable. They are also concerned with society branding those with genetic predisposition to disease as defective or inferior. But let us look at the real problem: a lack of protection and respect for all human life. If abortion was not legal then these tests wold simply provide information. It is abortion and the subsequent lack of respect for human life that is the evil. Let us put the moral blame where it belongs.
This is similar to an Australian conservative that wants to ban an over the counter, non-invasive test that tells you the sex of your baby as early as 10 weeks:
Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace said the product should be banned.
"That we would allow a product that would allow eugenics to be practised and started in the home is just unbelievable," he said.
It is not the test that is "allowing eugenics." It is the practice of abortion for any reason. How about banning abortion instead of an over-the-counter test that does not harm the fetus in any way? The Church is clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with prenatal testing, as long as it is not done with abortion in mind. It is the availability of abortion and the intent to use it that makes any prenatal testing immoral.
In fact, these new German laws will really do nothing to prevent eugenics in the prenatal arena because prenatal genetic testing is still allowed for so-called "medical reasons" like testing for Downs, cystic fibrosis, and spinal muscular atrophy. Parents can find out about and abort for these conditions if they so desire.
Restricting the information you can discover with genetic testing and how you can access it just puts a cartoon band aid on a gapping wound. The problem is a society that does not value and respect all human life whatever the stage.
This is a tough arena for us as Catholics. There are many Catholics who would be happy to shut down any progress in genetics and biotechnology simply because it might be used to marginalize our fellow man. It is true that this may happen, but it is also true that genetics and biotechnology have the potential to help a great many people. Rejecting it all as unethical is the wrong approach. We need to keep putting the blame where it rightfully belongs: a society (and government) that allows abortion-on-demand, a society (and government) that embraces tossing out embryos if they fail the genetic test and a society that thinks that a certain genetic make-up makes some people less desirable than others.
To paint advances in genetics and biotechnology as unethical, even if they are not inherently immoral just because they might be used for ill, will not advance the cause of the sanctity of life. It will only shut us out of the discussions on the ethics of advancements like preimplantation genetic diagnosis and genetic enhancement that are inherently immoral. It will shut us out of places where Catholic wisdom and guidance are sorely needed.
Because we have such a clear and consistent teaching on the sanctity of human life, I contend that it is our duty as Catholics to embrace what is good in genetics and biotechnology for the good of humanity and in doing so make clear where the ethical lines need to be drawn.
This morning I got a great e-mail from a reader who was troubled by the fact that this blog is a "Catholic's" guide to biotechnology and not simply a "Christian's" guide to biotechnology. I realized this excellent comment was an opportunity to explain that this is not meant to be exclusionary. I blog for all, from atheists to Baptists, and am often most excited by my non-Catholic readers. That being said, this blog will remain distinctly Catholic. Here is (essentially) my reply as to why:
Dear Reader,
Thank-you for you comments. You are not the first to suggest that what I discuss is first Christian and second Catholic. Overall, you are correct. But I cling to the denomination for a very important reason. It has nothing to do with being exclusionary. There are two Church teachings that I use to guide all of my decisions regarding the ethics of biotechnology. The first we undoubtedly share: that human life at all stages has dignity and deserves respect and should be protected.
The second is a principle that is just as important in this arena as the first but is not necessarily a tenant of Protestant denominations: to create a human being outside of the act of love between a husband and wife is immoral. This speaks specifically to IVF and another reproductive technologies like cloning that are in our future that "order up" human life in a dish.
It is this second principle is distinctly Catholic. It is this teaching that makes me hesitant to simply call my site Christian since many Christian denominations have accepted IVF as a good. I am not willing to concede that it is. And without the second principle, my arguments loose their internal consistency.
Basically, I am for "truth in advertising". I am Catholic and I use Catholic teaching to guide my writing.
I hope that clarifies my reasoning for you. That being said I will tell you that I write for a very wide audience. In fact some of my most prized readers are liberal atheists. So all are welcome. My goal is to present a much maligned but much needed view into the Brave New World we live in.
As I am not nearly as versed in the teachings of other Christian denominations, I would love to know other's thoughts. Let me know what you think.
This week President Obama announced Francis Collins as his pick for the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH.) First, why is the NIH so important? The NIH is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. When President Obama lifted funding restrictions on the funding of embryonic stem cell research he left it up to the NIH to decide which embryonic stem cells will qualify for federal funding and which ones will not. (Read about the NIH guidelines here.) So it is the NIH that gives researchers our tax dollars. If a scientist wants federal money to conduct research, they apply for an NIH grant.
So how do I feel about Francis Collins as director of the NIH? There are pros and cons. The pros are that Francis Collins is an accomplished scientist who knows how government works. He is also a man of great faith. He wroteThe Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief where he puts his faith on public display. This is good for openly religious scientists. Collins will not discriminate against another scientist simply because of their faith and in a time where science it pitted against religion more and more, (and the religious are ridiculed as "goofballs" by some scientists) this is a good thing.
Also, Collins' faith tells me that he values the contribution of religion to bioethical issues. Science needs moral guidance from other disciplines like religion and the law because it has no internal moral compass. Science cannot stand alone without any moral oversight. A big plus is that Collins believes that a human embryo has moral worth. He believes in the sanctity of human life. This is important because many scientists just see a human embryo as no more than just a clump of cells and therefore available to be manipulated and destroyed.
That being said, Collins major minus is that he seems to believe that the moral worth left-over IVF embryos maybe outweighed by the potential benefit of using those left-over embryos for research. He states in an interview:
There are hundreds of thousands of those embryos currently frozen away in in vitro fertilization clinics. And it is absolutely unrealistic to imagine that anything will happen to those other than they’re eventually getting discarded. So as much as I think human embryos deserve moral status, it is hard to see why it’s more ethical to throw them away than to take some that are destined for discarding and do something that might help somebody.
The Catholic Church rejects this argument. It is not morally permissible to intentionally end an innocent human no matter how well intentioned the goal. At least, Collins sees there are moral issues with destroying embryos for research. Obama could have appointed someone who had no moral reservations.
I believe Collins draws the line at creating embryos with egg and sperm just for research purposes. This is good. A definite pro. But there is a disconnect in Collins views on cloning embryos for research. He believes there is fundamental moral difference between embryos created with egg and sperm and embryos created with somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) better known as cloning. According this critique, Collins wrote appendix in his book called "Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer is Fundamentally Different," he wrote:
“I would argue that the immediate product of a skin cell and an enucleated egg cell fall short of the moral status of the union of sperm and egg”
According to this, Collins believes that embryos created by cloning do not share the moral worth of embryos created with egg and sperm. This suggests that he thinks cloning embryos for research is morally permissible.
But there is no fundamental difference between a human embryo created with egg and sperm and a human embryo created with SCNT. Both are full members of the human species. In fact, a cloned embryo is an "exact" copy of another human organism which proves it is a human organism itself. Dolly the sheep was created by SCNT. She was no less a sheep than the other sheep on her farm. In fact, she was a genetic twin of the animal from which her DNA was taken. This aspect of Collins philosophy is disturbing. Maybe he will have an epiphany and see the error in his thinking.
Overall, I think Collins is a good choice for NIH director. While he has some definite cons, the fact that he acknowledges the sanctity of human life is important. That is a huge pro and should be celebrated.
As a tribute to my father on Father's Day, I am revisiting his conversation with Jerome Lejeune, the French geneticist that discovered trisomy 21, the genetic cause of Down Syndrome. Dr. Lejeune was not just a great scientist, he was a Catholic.
To say that Lejeune is an inspiration is an understatement. So imagine my surprise when, in a casual conversation with my father, I found out that not only had he met Lejeune, but he had driven Lejeune to a conference and they had shared a very profound and enlightening discussion. The following is my father's recollections of a man who was not only a great man of science, but also a man of great faith:
Conversing with Jérôme Lejeune
In June 1978, I drove Dr. Jérôme Lejeune from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, where he was to give a major address at an international conference. I knew Dr. Lejeune only by reputation: pediatrician specializing in the treatment of children with chromosomal anomalies and renowned geneticist who had discovered the cause of Down’s syndrome some 20 years earlier. At the time I met him, he was professor of Genetics at the University of René Descartes in Paris. Until his death in 1994, he would focus his work and research on preventing and treating Trisomy 21, the cause of Down’s syndrome.
Prior to heading northwest to St. John’s, we stopped at the University of Minnesota where Dr, Lejeune was scheduled to give a lecture to medical students on the intricate elegance of DNA and RNA. He was obviously in his element—a quiet confidence and wonderful sense of humor underlay his love and gift for sharing an enormously complex, microcosmic world. At the close, the students showed their appreciation by clapping beyond the norm.
Back on the road, he asked about my life and work at St. John’s University and seemed genuinely interested in my responses. But, I wanted to talk about infinitely more interesting things, to wit, his life and research. After graduate school (in theology), I had taken two years of pre-med and could ask basic scientific questions, so I did. What ensued was a fascinating tour of the beginnings of human life: helical structures, DNA replication, the unbelievably sophisticated world of genetics.
Over many years of chromosomal research, Dr. Lejeune said he had come to the awareness that our human building blocks/structures could not have come to be by chance. For him, the pattern was too singular, too reasonable, too amazingly elegant to come from molecular randomness. And he expressed the hope that someday he would be able to elucidate more the intricate mathematical and physiological “formulae” behind the design itself.
For the next hour and a half, I soaked up as much as I could. What impressed me more than Dr. Lejeune’s knowledge, was his person. He was passionate without being the least pedantic. He obviously loved life, at every level. At no time was he ever patronizing. Indeed, he was enthusiastic and completely at ease talking about mundane stuff. He was completely engaged and therefore engaging. Every now and then he would let his French sense of humor bubble to the surface. At one point, with a wry smile and eyes twinkling, he quipped that his house in Paris was older than the United States. He had gauged me correctly—I responded with a loud guffaw and a “put ’em up” look.
Dr. Lejeune was a man of faith. Indeed, he exuded faith… in life, in science, in God. He saw no barriers, no compartments, no built-in contradictions amidst “levels” of reality, from the biological to the spiritual.
Suddenly, we were at St. John’s; an hour and a half drive in just about a minute and a half. An unforgettable ride at warp speed.
Thank-you again Dad for sharing that! My father also sent me the following words of Dr. Lejeune. I post them here so that you can hear his words for yourself:
Excerpts from “When Human Life Begins” (testimony by Dr. Lejeune before a US Senate Judiciary subcommittee [year unknown]):
… Thanks to a refined sonar-like imagery, Dr. Ian Donald, from England, a year ago succeeded in producing a movie featuring the youngest star in the world, an 11-week-old baby dancing in utero (in the uterus). The baby plays, so to speak, on a trampoline! He bends his knees, pushes on the wall, soars up and falls down again. Because his body has the same buoyancy as the amniotic fluid, he does not feel gravity and performs his dance in a very slow, graceful, and elegant way, impossible in any other place on the Earth. Only astronauts in their gravity-free state can achieve such gentleness of motion. (By the way, for the first walk in space, technologists had to decide where to attach the tubes carrying the fluids. They finally chose the belt buckle of the suit, reinventing the umbilical cord.)
When I had the honor of testifying previously before the Senate, I took the liberty of referring to the universal fairy-tale of the man smaller than the thumb. At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb's length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there: hands, feet, head, organs, brain, all are in place. His heart has been beating for a month already. Looking closely, you would see the palm creases and a fortune teller would read the good adventure of that tiny person. With a good magnifier the fingerprints could be detected. Every document is available for a national identity card.
With the extreme sophistication of our technology, we have invaded his privacy. Special hydrophones reveal the most primitive music: a deep, profound, reassuring hammering at some 60-70 per minute (the maternal heart) and a rapid, high-pitched cadence at some 150-170 (the heart of the fetus). These, mixed, mimic those of the counterbass and of the maracas, which are the basic rhythms of any pop music.
We now know what he feels, we have listened to what he hears, smelled what he tastes and we have really seen him dancing full of grace and youth. Science has turned the fairytale of Tom Thumb into a true story, the one each of us has lived in the womb of his mother.
And to let you measure how precise the detection can be: if at the beginning, just after conception, days before implantation, a single cell was removed from the little berry-looking individual, we could cultivate that cell and examine its chromosomes. If a student, looking at it under the microscope, could not recognize the number, the shape and the banding pattern of these chromosomes, if he was not able to tell safely whether it comes from a chimpanzee being or from a human being, he would fail in his examination.
To accept the fact that, after fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or of opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention. It is plain experimental evidence.
The Scientist reported yesterday that Francis Collins is the favorite of the Obama's picks for the director of the NIH. In case you are unaware of who Francis Collins is, he is the former Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and led the Human Genome Project. He is also an outspoken Christian and has written a book titled, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. He also started the BioLogos Foundation that "promotes the search for truth in both the natural and spiritual realms seeking harmony between these different perspectives." His religion has earned him some serious criticism from other scientists.
I am pleased to see the Collins is seriously being considered. In a time when some believe you are not a real scientist if you believe in God, Collins would be a good choice for director. From the comments on The Scientist Community it is clear that Collins is regarded by many to be a man of integrity that would not allow he particular religious beliefs to interfere with the demands of the position. Here is one comment:
In my opinion, Francis would be an excellent choice for NIH Director. I first interacted with him at the University of Michigan as a fellow faculty member and continued to have interactions over the years as he made his climb to head of the Genome Center. As an accomplished scientist and researcher, he brings all that goes with being both of those to the position. However, I have been especially impressed with his interest in, and commitment to, minorities, not just as it relates to health disparities but also to the need to address the under representation of minorities in the sciences. I have not seen that degree of commitment to this area from other Directors, despite NIH continually stating such a commitment and considering the importance of this issue, we need someone with that type of commitment. When that is combined with his scientific successes and his ability to speak to issues that scientists do not always feel comfortable speaking to, e.g. religion, he would be not only the right person for the job but also would bring a perspective to a critically important position that heretofore has not been seen.
Of course, there are some bloggers who just cannot get over the fact that Collins believes in God:
I know he had a good reputation as an administrator of the human genome project, but do we really need to go back to the Bush years of god-walloping goofballs at the head of every major government agency?
(Because everyone knows that it is a scientific fact that anyone who believes in God is a goofball, and that immediately disqualifies you for any management position in the science arena no matter what your previous achievements.)
Collins is afraid of science. Fear doesnt make a good leader. But threatening to make him head of the NIH makes a good substitute for ipecac.
Personally, I believe that if Collins is appointed head of the NIH every scientist, especially those who are religious, can breath a sigh of relief that come grant time they will be judged on their work, and not how they spend their Sundays. If an atheist was appointed (especially one that would satisfy those who despise Collins so much,) I am not sure that same could be said.
The Vatican is preparing to re-evaluate 19th century British naturalist Charles Darwin 200 years after his birth and 150 years since the publication of his landmark work, On the Origin of Species.
As opposed to the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church never condemned Darwin's work and next month will examine his theory of evolution in depth from the point of view of Christian faith.
This will be done at a March 3-7 conference sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture to be attended by a host of international scholars and theologians.
''Now more than ever it is necessary to scientifically discuss the various scientific aspects of the theory of evolution, a theory which has been at the center of the history of science for Catholic and non-Catholic scholars,'' said Father March Leclerc, a professor of philosophy at the Gregorian University here who has organised the five-day debate.
This should be very interesting. Especially since many Christians believe as I do that faith and evolution are not mutually exclusive:
According to the Vatican's 'culture minister', Msgr. Gianfranco Ravasi, ''it is important to establish a dialogue which unites science and faith''.
''Neither approach alone is sufficient to fully explain the mystery of man and the mystery of the universe. Problems arise when they overlap to the extent that scientific theory becomes an ideological system applied to reality as a whole, which is the absurd case of social Darwinism,'' the head of the pontifical culture council added.
The US Catholic Conference of Bishops have overwhelmingly agreed to issue a statement calling the destruction of human embryos for research immoral. The vote in Florida was 191 to 1. (I wanna know who was the hold out. Probably my bishop.) Click here to read the whole statement. Obviously, the argument rests on the fact that human embryos are human organisms and they therefore have inherent worth. Here is the revelant passage on the basic biology of the human embryo:
Second, some claim that the embryo in his or her first week of development is too small, immature, or undeveloped to be considered a “human life.” Yet the human embryo, from conception onward, is as much a living member of the human species as any of us. As a matter of biological fact, this new living organism has the full complement of human genes and is actively expressing those genes to live and develop in a way that is unique to human beings, setting the essential foundation for further development. Though dependent in many ways, the embryo is a complete and distinct member of the species Homo sapiens, who develops toward maturity by directing his or her own integrated organic functioning. All later stages of life are steps in the history of a human being already in existence. Just as each of us was once an adolescent, a child, a newborn infant, and a child in the womb, each of us was once an embryo.
Human embryos are human life. Time to get over that argument and get to the real reason we disagree on embryo destruction. Does this human life have any worth? Here is what the Bishops say:
Others, while acknowledging the scientific fact that the embryo is a living member of the human species, claim that life at this earliest stage is too weak or undeveloped, too lacking in mental or physical abilities, to have full human worth or human rights. But to claim that our rights depend on such factors is to deny that human beings have human dignity, that we have inherent value simply by being members of the human family. If fundamental rights such as the right to life are based on abilities or qualities that can appear or disappear, grow or diminish, and be greater or lesser in different human beings, then there are no inherent human rights, no true human equality, only privileges for the strong.
"Only privileges for the strong." That means if we do not uphold the worth and inherent dignity of the human embryo, when we become weak and voiceless, dependent on others, in need of protection, we can forget it. It won't be there for us.
I have become a popular booking for churches in my area. One church has had me speak 4 times this last year. This is not because I am the greatest speaker in the area. It is because the congregation is hungry for answers.
I have realized that there is a need; a great need for guidance from the clergy on issues of biotechnology and yet they are often silent or have nothing of real substance to say. I understand why. This is a huge and confusing field. But, your congregations need you to get educated and give them some guidance.
Case in point is this article from New Zealand about a new Anglican dean who basically has no real guidance to offer. Here are some excerpts with some harsh commentary:
Auckland's new Anglican dean, Ross Bay, wants the church to embrace
genetic engineering to cure disabilities such as Down syndrome - but he
draws the line at parents deciding they don't want a baby with red hair.
Mr
Bay, 42, vicar of St Mark's Church in Remuera, will replace Richard
Randerson as Dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell in November.
He supports parents' right to abort a fetus that was diagnosed with a
disability such as spina bifida and said the same principle should
apply to new techniques that might knock out the genes for conditions
such as Down syndrome.
I am sorry Mr. Bay, I cannot see how curing Down syndrome with gene therapy and aborting a fetus with spina bifida are even close to morally equivalent. One is about healing a person with a disability, the other is about getting rid of a person with a disability.
There is more. When asked about where the line should be drawn regarding eugenic abortion, he has this to say:
But what about the child born with red hair? What do we say about the ethics of [influencing] that?" he said.
"Those are the two extremes. There's going to be a lot in the middle.
Intelligence? I don't know that I know the answer but I'm interested."
If you are going to say that it is okay to abort certain children and not others, you dang well better know where you want to draw the line. If you don't know the "answer", find it because your congregations needs straight answers.
Unfortunately, Bay and the Anglican church are not willing to give them:
He said the church's role was to help people to think about the issues, but it did not want to lay down the law.
"Gone are the days when most people in the church want to impose an ethic on people," he said.
When couples asked him about whether to abort a child diagnosed with spina bifida, he did not tell them what to do.
"It's
a pretty tough decision for parents to make when faced with that
information about the quality of life [of their prospective child]," he
said.
"I'd hate to be a decision-maker. I wouldn't want to condemn people in those situations making a decision about abortion.
Mr. Bay, you are a leader in your church, not these couples' best friend. You can tell them about the church's stance on the sanctity of life without "condemning them." Ultimately it is their decision, but they came to you for advice, give them some!
So here is my plea to clergy everywhere. Get educated on issues of reproductive technologies, genetics, genetic engineering and biotechnology and help your flock deal with these very pressing issues. If you feel you cannot speak on such issues, find someone who can and then attend the talk. Most priests do not attend my talks. Not surprisingly, the much needed information I have to give never makes it to the pulpit.
Et-tu Jen? has a great post on whether or not spiritual attacks are real or imaginary. I have heavily debated whether to discuss this topic here because it is very personal. But I think someone may find my experience interesting
Being science-minded I was never one for the idea that there were such things as spiritual attacks. I thought they were probably real, but really had no strong opinion either way.
If you would have told me 3 years ago that I would be a firm believer in spiritual warfare, I would have told you that you were crazy. But times have changed.
Ever since I started www.MaryMeetsDolly.com and this blog and especially since I have begun speaking about stem cell research and cloning, I have felt under attack.
Many, many things in my life that were previously fine, would fall apart right after I gave a great talk or had a story about me published in a local paper. My job that I normally enjoyed somedays became so unbearable with interpersonal problems that I have almost quit several times.
But I think the thing I find most disturbing is that I normally look forward to public speaking and really enjoyed my presentations. I have now become so anxious before I am scheduled to speak, I often have to talk myself out of turning the car around and going home. Minutes before one talk at a youth conference, I started to cry and nearly left the building. I cannot tell you how uncharacteristic that is for me.
I have a friend who is much more in the public eye on these matters than I am and I recently discussed my feelings with him. He immediately recognized what was surrounding me. Spiritual warfare. He told me if I was going to go out and speak the unpopular Truth, then I better put on my spiritual armor. Before his entrance into the life issues arena, his was not a strong believer. Now he never leaves home without his icons.
And now I never go to work or to a speaking engagement without prayer. So, I guess I am asking those who know of what it is I speak, to pray for me. I need all the protection I can get.
It has been said many times the Church is anti-science. Not true. The Church embraces a lot of technology, as long as it does not diminish the value of every human life. I found this story of a run in with a Vatican investigator of miracles on a bus in Rome fascinating:
We were waiting nervously at a bus stop -- nervously, because I rarely board the right bus on the first try -- when a man in a black overcoat came to our aid. He looked like Robert De Niro, and he had an expensive leather satchel slug over his shoulder. He was headed in the same direction and made sure we got on the correct bus.
"I work at the Vatican," he told us. "I investigate miracles."
The man explained: Anyone in line to become a saint -- and there are hundreds -- needs to have two miracles attributed to them -- the first as a prelude to beatification, the second for full canonization.
But these days, when every buzzer-beater in a high school basketball game is proclaimed a miracle, what does the Vatican consider to be the real deal?
"It's something extraordinary that you can't explain with science," he said. "It's something that you must attribute to God."
Most modern miracle claims, he said, involve remarkable medical cures -- such as the Indian woman who is said to have rid herself of a tumor by placing a picture of Mother Teresa on her stomach -- so the Vatican's six judges from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints use a pool of doctors to help them rule out scientific explanations for these phenomena. Physicians and scientists of all manner of disciplines participate, even psychologists and sociologists.
Several years ago, I remember watching a story on the efforts to save India's gharial crocodile. On the verge of extinction, it is the most endangered crocodile on the planet. After sending out thousands of gharials into the wild, only 200 breeding adults are left. I remember marveling at the lengths the researchers and volunteers were going to save this prickly, yet majestic animal.Conversing with Jérôme Lejeune
A few months back I was contact by Alexandra Pajak, a Catholic composer of DNA music, about her album Sounds of HIV. The album is now available on Amazon.com and I highly recommend checking it out and purchasing it as Alexandra is donating some of the proceeds to the Emory University Vaccine Center toward AIDS research. 
The Vatican is preparing to re-evaluate 19th century British naturalist Charles Darwin 200 years after his birth and 150 years since the publication of his landmark work, On the Origin of Species.
