Science and ethics:
Can come together in stem cell research

	Guest commentary  Richard Doerflinger

New advances in stem cell research are rebutting politicians' claim that taxpayers must be forced to subsidize the killing of human embryos. Some advances involve "reprogramming" adult cells to act more like embryonic stem cells.

In one study, published in Science, researchers fused existing embryonic stem cells with adult skin cells, producing a new embryonic stem cell with the genetic makeup of the adult cell.

Ethical and practical problems remain. The technique still uses a stem cell originally obtained by destroying a human embryo. Some think this ethical problem may ultimately be solved by isolating the factors in stem cells that achieve this "reprogramming" and manufacturing them directly.

Removing DNA

Researchers also have to determine the best way to remove the DNA of the old stem cell, so the new fused cell has only the genetic makeup of the adult cell. Already, however, this advance is undercutting two arguments for government-sponsored destruction of human embryos.

First, it undercuts the argument that new embryos must be destroyed in the name of embryonic stem cell research. Regrettably, even current federal policy funds research using stem cells that were obtained by destroying embryos before August 2001. Many in Congress say that policy must now expand to promote the killing of new embryos, because the old cell lines are limited in number and becoming genetically abnormal over time.

But if those old cell lines can be used to make brand new stem cells with the normal genetic makeup of adult cells, at least the argument for destroying new embryos falls apart.

'Therapeutic cloning'

Second, it undercuts so-called "therapeutic cloning," where human embryos are cloned and then destroyed for their stem cells.

Patients' own cells can be used to make new embryonic stem cells that are a perfect genetic match to them, without making an embryo who is then destroyed.

The medical argument against a complete ban on human cloning therefore becomes obsolete.

Using other stem cells

Let's also not forget the broader question: Why do we need embryonic stem cells at all?

Despite a quarter-century's research in mouse embryonic stem cells, and over seven years in the human variety, even the latest studies show disappointing results and a troubling tendency for these cells to form tumors.

South Korean cloning expert Curie Ahn said that developing therapies may take "three to five decades." That makes new advances in non-embryonic stem cells even more important. For example, British and American researchers have discovered a stem cell in umbilical cord blood that seems as versatile as embryonic stem cells.

According to Cell Proliferation, they also learned how to multiply these cells in the lab for clinical use, using "microgravity" technology developed by NASA for experiments in space - and the U.S. team is working to make these cells produce islet cells for treatment of diabetes.

Any way you look at it, good news is popping up all over on the stem cell front - except for those who keep insisting we must kill to cure.

Richard Doerflinger is deputy director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Humanae Vitae:
Prophetic encyclical then and now

		A Culture  of Life  Kimberly Hahn

On July 25, 1968, shortly after the close of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI promulgated a much-anticipated encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae.

Historically, it was a time of much confusion: the sexual revolution was in full swing, the Pill was being hailed as the long-awaited perfect contraceptive to cure the social ills related to overpopulation, and even Catholic clergy advised the pope to reconcile the Church with the times in response to the report of the commission established by Pope John XXIII.

Pope Paul VI recognized the service of the commission, though he set aside their conclusion. He reiterated the responsibility of the teaching authority of the Church, the Magisterium, to interpret faithfully the current situation in the light of Scripture and Tradition.

In a very few pages, he explained God's design for Christian marriage and the Church's view on contraception, sterilization, and abortion in the context of the sanctity of marriage.

Prophetic encyclical

This wasn't the message many within or outside the Church wanted to hear. Initially, many (even some Catholic theologians and priests) scoffed at what they saw as an antiquated Church attempting to rein in free-thinking people who understood the times.

However, in the light of almost 40 years' hindsight, this document has proven to be prophetic in its explanation of the cultural death awaiting those who would reject the beautiful vision of life and love set forth by our Lord in the Catholic Church.

This was the first encyclical Scott and I ever read as Protestants. Its direct yet pastoral approach to such a difficult subject amazed us. Its teachings are not time-bound; they reveal timeless truths with which we may regain our cultural footings.

Importance in marriage

A mother from Haslett, Mich., wrote us about the importance of Humanae Vitae in her marriage:

"My husband was the more convinced about the Church's teaching. The issue of aesthetics helped me to reject contraception. I was repulsed by condoms, jellies, and the hazards of messing up my body with a pill. Eventually my heart was changed through reading and understanding Humanae Vitae."

Sadly enough, many Catholics have never read this brief but beautiful teaching.

Personal example

Family members do not always encourage obedience on this issue. Sometimes a family member tries to assure a loved one that Catholics don't have to follow the Church on this issue, if they do not agree with the Church. One woman recalled:

"We used artificial contraception when we got married until my sister called from Indonesia, crying on the phone and begging my forgiveness. Since we have been blessed with a great relationship, I was confused as to what she could have done to me from overseas.

"She knew she suggested for me to use the Pill when I first got married since it seemed to be working for her and many people she knew. Since then, she had come to learn that it could cause an abortion. She would send information about this as well as information on NFP and what the Church teaches."

Though her sister misled her initially, she also helped her return to the truth.

Kimberly Hahn, mother of six, is co-author of the bestseller Roman, Sweet Home, Our Journey to Catholicism, with her husband Scott Hahn. This column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and is reprinted from Kimberly Hahn's book, Life-Giving Love (St. Anthony Messenger Press).

Condom dilemma:
Defining protection and true love

		Making Sense  Out of Bioethics  Fr. Tad  Pacholczyk

The "popular" wisdom these days insists that because we can't stop our children from engaging in pre-marital sex, and because such sex can be dangerous and have bad effects, we should do everything we can to protect our youngsters by giving them condoms.

Condoms, we are assured, help decrease pregnancies and decrease sexually transmitted diseases in a simple, straightforward way. If parents love their children, they will surely see to it that they have "protection."

Flawed understanding

This argument, widely accepted in all strata of our society, relies on a seriously flawed understanding of what love really means. We need only consider a related example to see this flaw clearly.

If our children decide that they are going to play hopscotch on the asphalt of a busy interstate highway, in the midst of high-speed traffic, would we be manifesting our love for them by giving them helmets to place over their heads for "protection," or would real love involve pulling them off the roadway and insisting they learn abstinence from freeway hopscotch?

Which of these actions genuinely manifests a parent's love for their children? True love often demands a higher and a more committed path, in place of an easier or more permissive path.

Condoms, in the guise of a loving solution, involve us in a grave moral compromise, tempt us to yield to a more permissive path, and invariably fail the demands of true love.

Issue of AIDS

Those demands are particularly challenging for a married couple, one of whom has contracted AIDS. In order to protect the uninfected partner, some argue that it should be permissible for the husband to make use of a condom during marital relations. Otherwise, unprotected sex might well be the equivalent of a death sentence for the uninfected partner.

The popular wisdom here again assures us that condoms are the loving answer to a difficult situation. But true spousal love, in these sad circumstances, beckons us to a higher and harder path - a path of marital abstinence.

A husband who has AIDS would never want to subject the wife he loves to a potentially death-dealing act on his part, which is what sexual intercourse could become for them, even while using a condom (which has a failure rate).

Would it be a loving act to subject her to the risk of a possibly fatal encounter, even for something as beautiful as conjugal intimacy in marriage? Although it is an integral part of married love, sexual activity is, in fact, not absolutely essential for us as human beings, distinct from the case of eating or sleeping. We tend to lose sight of that basic fact in a relentlessly sex-permeated society.

Grave circumstances

Perpetual marital abstinence is certainly a difficult proposal, and is generally not recommended, but grave circumstances like AIDS represent a strong call to this particular kind of sacrificial love and sexual self-mastery. It is not completely different from the situation of a married couple, one of whom is called to long term military service overseas, wherein both are required to practice sexual continence when they are separated, even perhaps for years.

Many married couples do live as brother and sister for a host of reasons, and AIDS certainly constitutes a grave reason to justify such a choice. Learning to love each other in different and non-genital ways is, in fact, an integral component of every successful and enduring marriage, and an AIDS infection merely brings greater urgency and immediacy to the task.

The use of condoms in marriage, beyond all the talk of effectiveness and failure rates, involves us in some very significant moral violations. Condoms, invariably a form of contraception, violate marital love right at its core.

By making use of contraception, we say to our spouse, in effect, "I love you, except for your fertility and fecundity. I will not embrace that part of you. Rather, I will cordon it off, separate it, and put it aside, so I can use my sexuality and the rest of you in a way that brings satisfaction to me."

Unreserved gift

But marital sexuality, and marriage in general, really involves the complete and unreserved gift of our self to our spouse. Marital love is not meant to be partial.

Marital sexual intercourse is a special personal language that always means surrendering ourselves totally. Such a total self-donation embodies within itself the radical possibility of engendering new life, which can then be protected and raised within the pact of that couple's unreserved and indissoluble love.

The use of a condom, on the other hand, may permit a couple to mutually generate certain pleasurable sensations together, but it explicitly militates against that full gift of self that is written right into the inner language of the marital act itself. Couples close off a part of themselves to the other, and deny access to the deepest and most life-giving center of who they are whenever they engage in contraceptive sex.

Contraception is a kind of lie that a man and a woman speak to each other through their bodies, feigning the total gift of themselves to each other, but always actually holding back that gift.

Respecting the God-given designs for our sexuality and struggling towards sexual self-mastery is one of the great challenges of our age, and probably of every age. Arguments in favor of widespread condom availability are emblematic of a collective loss of nerve in the face of powerful libertine pressures within our culture.

Against the backdrop of that troubled culture, God opens up a higher and more authentic path to us. We glimpse that beautiful path every time we allow his grace and mercy to empower us to love others as we genuinely ought to.

Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., and serves as the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pa.