Katie Couric and the Progressive Science-Loving Church is an article by Catholic scientist STACY TRASANCOS. It discusses a recent conference co-hosted by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture and the Stem for Life Foundation. It brought together scientists with religious, government, and cultural leaders to discuss the future of stem cell research. And Katie Couric was allowed to attend.
I’m sure many of us can get behind the Catholic church teaching that adult stem cell research is acceptable. As Trasancos says, “This is a conversation that needs to be happening, and it needs to be guided by people of faith, hope, and love.”
> The Church, as you know, supports adult stem cell research using cells taken from adult bodies to find cures for chronic degenerative diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and particularly childhood diseases. The Church does not support embryonic stem cell research, which requires the destruction of human embryos or the use of aborted fetuses. It is a difficult topic because as long as abortion is legal, non-Catholic ethicists will argue that using aborted children is better than discarding them.
The ethical problem for the Catholic Church is how fetal stem cells are obtained. I shudder to use the terminology…the cells are “harvested” from aborted fetuses.
nearly 20 years ago they shown it to be possible to create an embryo out of an oocyst and the nucleus from a cell from the mammary gland, thus you do not need a stem cell, just egg and bacon to prolong human suffering.
There is literally no person anywhere who opposes the use of adult stem cells. I also doubt that there would be any opposition to the use of miscarried fetal stem cells (ie: not aborted), or amniotic or cord blood stem cells. The ethical issue is the issue of cloning or otherwise creating embryos for human farming. In my opinion there is a very hard line that does not deserve discussion about the creation of human beings for our consumption. (ie: taking DNA from an adult, cloning it into an egg, and then growing yourself some body parts from the conceptus). That simply needs to be a hard NO, because there is no faith, hope, or love in creating life for your own consumption.
thanks, indeed.
The question of creating embryos is the purpose. We know that cloning humans created twins. As such the creation of an embryo is the creation of a new human life. But then modern society thinks the life of others is dispensable logically incoherent, but who cares.
The question s why we do stem cell research. Is it because of the fall? Who benefits from it?
which article? The one that explains the benefit of a bottle opener with the popes face in your bra? It talks about the benefit of materialistic healing. Tell me who benefits from that?
Stem cell therapy so far has been practiced so far on the level of organ , e.g. bone marrow transplant. The cost of stem cell treatment like for a number of other disease has lead to a problem of affordability of treatment and a problem with cost benefit analysis in health care. It may prolong life, but does it heal?