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There have
been hundreds of thousands frozen human embryos in the world and the number
increases every day. In the USA, there are 400,000 frozen embryos, of which
11,000 are not object of a parental project; in France, there would be more
than 80,000 supernumerary embryos, in Belgium, 24,000… The question of their
future has a global and urgent dimension.
For instance,
in
the
USA,
the adoption of embryos increases but it is neither free nor anonymous.
According to some adoption programs, the progenitor families may define the
criteria for the adoptive family and the families are invited to keep in
touch during the child’s education.
Ethic call
Father Alain Mattheeuws, Jesuit, doctor of moral and sacramental theology at
the Catholic Institute of Toulouse, professor in different universities and
specialist in bioethics research and moral theology discusses the sensitive
issues which surround the freezing, the implantation and the adoption of
embryos created by fertilization in vitro1.
He launches an « ethic call » so that frozen embryo is respected and
named “frozen embryonic child”.
Freezing of
embryos
The
freezing of human embryos enables increasing the efficiency of different
techniques of medically assisted procreation and aims at avoiding repeated
oocyte extractions. If we consider these embryonic cells as biologic
material or a potential embryo, their freezing only raises legal and
technical problems: to whom belong these embryos entrusted to the clinic,
abandoned or forgotten in a hospital? May their accidental destroying
generate a responsibility, damages, etc.?
On the
other hand, if we consider that it is necessary to respect the human being
from its conception, the freezing of embryo is unacceptable and morally
illicit. The instruction of Donum Vitae of the Congregation on the
Doctrine of the Faith, in 1987, expressed as follows: “The freezing of
embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve the life of an embryo -
cryopreservation - constitutes an offence against the respect due to human
beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical
integrity and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and
gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offences and
manipulation are possible.”
Responsibility of the parents
Father
Mattheeuws underlines that the parents do not have an absolute right over
their “embryonic children”; but they are responsible for them. In
general, the centres of Medically Assisted Procreation (MAP) ask the parents
to sign a document. This signature is a civil agreement which does not
always correspond with the law written on the hearts of men. Even as
parents, they cannot “morally sign a total release of the embryos issued
from their bodies and from their persons”. The parents are not entitled
to give their embryonic children as objects, they cannot divest themselves
of the responsibility they took on in conceiving these embryos even with the
help of doctors.
Add an evil
on top of another?
It is in parents’ hands to avoid adding one evil on top of another. To
create supernumerary embryos and to freeze them is one evil, to keep them in
this state is another. To decide to make them material for science is also
an evil. The parents must be vigilant in protecting the dignity of their
frozen embryonic children for what they are and what they could become. In
the frozen state, we are denying the embryo a quality inherent to its being:
its time and its future. Its status, which is by nature fragile, is fixed
fragility.
Adoption of
frozen embryos: what are the stakes?
The woman
who “adopts” a frozen embryo welcomes the child to carry it and to
bring it into the world. This embryo, which is genetically a stranger to
her, will not be carried by or for another woman, as it is the case for a
surrogate mother; the child is welcomed for itself. The fact remains that
the woman does not have an absolute right over her body. “Her being is
essentially personal, body, heart and soul and this personal unit cannot
become a pure instrument of survival for the frozen embryo”. Then the
woman accepts, in the intimacy of her body, the child issued from another
‘relation’; this act instrumentalises her, whether she wants it or not.
Corporally, the woman who welcomes a frozen embryonic child poses an act
which is not hers: it is the act of another women or another couple.
Nevertheless this act cannot be delegated; there is an
“indissoluble unity” between conception and gestation. The adoption of
frozen embryos reveals a generous intention, but the object of this act (to
give the embryos access to terrestrial life) contradicts the respect due to
any human being, in this case to women.
To
conciliate respect of embryos and respect of woman
For Father
Mattheeuws, it is not about condemning women who generously propose to adopt
these embryos but about making them think about it: why promoting a practice
which is not fair? Being aware of the sacred character of life is a moral
requirement in any circumstance but admitting a human powerlessness or a
lack of generosity is not always a weakness: it can be the sign of a real
humility, the one which tries to find the truth of every life and to respect
God’s plan in history. We have maybe to admit that we cannot save the frozen
embryos.
No
therapeutic obstinacy
It remains for us to do the
good possible, taking responsibility for the absurd condition and Father
Mattheeuws recommends “that we take them out of the 'cold' where they are
imprisoned, bring them back to the temporal conditions which rightly belong
to them, not use disproportionate means to save them, nor the means which
respect neither their dignity nor the dignity of those who wish to help
them. The teaching of the Magisterium on the subject of the refusal of
extraordinary means takes on a new relevance here. It does not involve some
kind of euthanasia, but rather the refusal to take any extraordinary and
ill-adapted means to try to make them survive.”
1 - Zenit,
23-24 March 2006 (www.zenit.org) |
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The
Parliamentary Office for Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Options
organized on 22 November 2005 public auditions directed by Mr. Alain Claeys,
Deputy, in order to redirect a report. This report was published on 5 April
20061.
Distorted
auditions
If
this report is officially dedicated to research on stem cells authorized by
law, it essentially aims at legalising therapeutic cloning. During the
auditions, all contributors were scientists who contribute to the cause and
representatives of biotechnology societies.
This « meeting » marked
the objective alliance of scientism and business as well as the total
absence of humanist thought about a so serious subject.
The
exclusive criterion of feasibility
As soon as
were introduced auditions entrusted to Ketty Schwartz, vice-president of
Inserm administration council and president of AFM scientific council, the
tone was set: cloning has to be authorized. The following contributors and
the deputy Alain Claeys, rapporteur, used the same affirmation. No need to
discuss about biologic or ethic field, all contributors agree. The only
question is to know why cloning is still not authorized since it is from now
feasible since Korean experimentations? (from these parliamentary auditions,
Korean results have been recognized as being fraudulent.)
No
therapeutic perspective
Contrary to
what they carried on proclaiming for years in order to obtain research
authorization on embryo, which is supposed to cure patients from their
diseases, today these researchers recognize that we will not find therapy
thanks to cloning. But they keep their determination to clone for profitable
reasons and to make their own knowledge progress. They do not talk anymore
about therapeutic cloning but about scientific cloning or research cloning.
The
significance of markets
The
significant markets in pharmaceutical field (screening by thousands of
molecules of genetically identified targets) and in predictive toxicology
field have been emphasized by merchants as well as by scientists. This way
we could see Pr. Peschanski defending fervently cloning for cosmetic
interests. For marketing reason, to facilitate the transformation of cloned
embryos into presentable goods, it was decided not to talk about cloning but
“nuclear transposition”.
The creation
of ill embryos
Not only,
the cloning will not cure ill patients but also will allow creating ill
embryos. The argument consists in cloning ill embryos to study them better.
To multiply ill patients with made-to-measure pathologies for researchers’
interests...
Towards an oocyte market?
To develop
cloning, the scientists consulted recognize nevertheless a difficulty: the
necessity to have oocyte in big quantity, taking into account the weak rate
of success in “nuclear transposition”. “This
necessity may pose a very real threat of oocyte commercialisation and
consequently their merchandizing, to which we have to firmly oppose”.
1 - Public auditions of 22 November 2005 to read on the
website of the French National Assembly |
