Genetics

A response to the European Convention on Biomedicine and Human Rights treaty on bioethics

By Fr. Joseph C. Howard, Jr., M. Div.
Director of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission

As the Human Genome Project reaches completion, there are serious ethical questions to be examined which will impact all of our lives. It is critical to note that none of us is conceived with a perfect genome.

It is estimated that each of us has 5–50 genetic errors in our own genetic make-up though errors in DNA nucleotides do not necessarily result in disease. Protooncogenes are normal cellular genes encoding a protein involved in regulation of cell growth and can be mutated into cancer promoting oncogenes.

Each of us is a product of interaction between our genes and our environment. As we age and interact with our environment, some of these genes will "turn on" and we may develop diabetes, heart disease, various cancers, etc. None of us from the moment of fertilization onward has a perfect genome. In one sense, we are all mutants in terms of the DNA nucleotides we harbor even if they are not presently manifesting a disease.

One serious concern raised in the international treaty on bioethics is allowing experimentation on clinically "spare" embryos yet forbidding the generation of human embryos for such experimentation. Procedures such as IVF are intrinsically unethical because they disassociate unitive and procreative aspects of conjugal relations, which violates Natural Law.

This opens the door to exploit human life in a number of ways at the very beginning. No parent can licitly grant consent for experimentation and destruction of their offspring even though others may regard human embryos deemed "spare" as useless.

How can such a treaty allow "excess" human embryos to be subject to experimentation and destruction yet forbid the generation of human embryos for such a purpose? This fails to recognize that even human embryos which are viewed as "spare" are ontologically human persons like all other human persons with an inherent right to life. Even when unethical procedures such as IVF are used to generate life, such new human lives are indeed ontologically human beings and human persons based on the fact that the zygote is not followed by a series of new natures that represent a juxtaposition of different beings. Rather, it proceeds in its development in an unbroken manner.

Under the precepts of justice, how can one protect the lives of certain human persons at the embryonic level and simultaneously disregard the lives of other human persons when ontologically both groups are in fact human persons!

We must insist that personhood be established at the very start, which is the human zygote. Many today erroneously view human embryos as "potential life." This error fails to recognize that potency and act are metaphysically inseparable.

In other words, something demonstrating potency must also have act. Potency does not exist apart from the act. Potency cannot be separated from act without doing violence to the individual human being. The essential evil in the killing of a human being at any stage is the deprivation of his future, all that could have been, and all that his potentiality would have converted into act.

The international treaty on bioethics of the European Convention on Biomedicine and Human Rights fails to secure full and total protection for all human lives from fertilization onward and is, therefore, ethically unacceptable.

This treaty embraces a philosophy of utilitarianism, which allows for the assault and destruction of particular innocent human lives if certain subjective criteria are met. What is needed is a recognition that incorporates without exception that the human zygote—a human embryo—is a unique human being, human individual, and human person all one and inseparable.