MAP: nature isn’t “a type of material available to humans to correct their imperfections and fulfil their desires”

Publié le 18 Jul, 2016

Standing before the signatories of the manifesto signed by 130 doctors who admit to “practising medically assisted procreation outside the confines of the law”, Professor René Frydman, “calls for a consistent approach in our country regarding all those who have clearly opened the floodgates by practising medically assisted procreation”. In response to those who claim that humans “are experimenting too much with the laws of nature”, René Frydman stated that, “medicine has always experimented with the laws of nature because if nature was that good, there would be no need for medicine”.

 

Bruno Couillaud, Doctor of Philosophy took up this response, commenting that, “nature appears to be a kind of material available to humans to correct their imperfections and fulfil their desires”. In fact, medicine “does not correct nature, just the defects that nature allows to slip through the net, the origins of which are sometimes a mystery” – sometimes only because “these defects are, at times, due to the defects of humans themselves in terms of their imperfect mastery of nature or similarly imperfect know-how”. Medicine also covers the consequences of human errors and even “the perverse effects of its own action”.

 

Viruses, new diseases and catastrophes play a minor role in nature “because, in most cases, nature succeeds and reaches its goal. It’s there to show us what is right and this is why it has its laws”, explained Bruno Couillaud. This is why “medicine has never assisted man against its will. We cannot correct ‘mistakes’ in nature by flouting the laws of nature, because there is more in nature than in our science and our imperfect powers”.

 

Going beyond the laws of nature, Bruno Couillaud also refers to  “a kind of natural law”,which emerges in medicine: “primum non nocere[1], and “calls for treatment to be delivered with respect for human dignity, whether the person is sick, old, infirm, disabled, with few friends or family, or at the developmental stage, like this little person, at the embryo stage, blessed with incredible potential – like us all, on the threshold of our existence”.

 

The philosopher invited some of the doctors who do not comply with civil law to ask themselves whether they are respecting the ethics behind their professionby asking for the bans on MAP to be lifted, veering away from the principle of precaution and failing to respect the dignity of the tiniest of beings.Because “we still have only a limited insight into MAP practices in general and all of the potential repercussions on germinal cells and embryos when they are punctured, handled, analysed and isolated from their natural environment before being transferred and reimplanted in their elected medium par excellence, or destroyed”.

[1] Translation: “primarily to protect”.

Liberté politique n°70, Bruno Couillaud

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