Posted on 03/11/2016 6:32:13 AM PST by wagglebee
In the wake of the huge controversy last year about the use of fetal tissue obtained from Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, the US Congress held hearings last week about “Bioethics and Fetal Tissue”.
Here are excerpts from the testimony of G. Kevin Donovan, Director of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington DC.
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I am a physician trained in both pediatrics and clinical bioethics. I have spent my entire professional career caring for infants and children. It was this interest and concern that led me to further study in bioethics, because I have always been concerned about the most vulnerable patients, those who need others to speak up for them, both at the beginning and at the end-of-life….
Four years ago I was called by my mentor, Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, to take his place as director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University. Our duties include ethics education for medical students and resident physicians, ethics consultation for patients and doctors at the hospital, as well as the promulgation of scholarly papers and public speaking. We focus on both clinical ethics, that which directly involves the good of patients, as well as addressing normative questions, those which involve right and wrong actions.
This is what we want young physicians to know: medicine is a moral enterprise.
Our actions have consequences that can be good or bad for patients, and we must always focus on the patient’s good and avoid doing harm. So what does this mean for the topic at hand? We’re talking about bioethics and the fetus. In order to make any moral judgments, we would have to be clear on the moral status of the fetus.
Obviously, this is an area in which society has not reached a consensus, but that does not mean we cannot make sound judgments on the topic. In a question of biomedical ethics, it is good to start with solid science. What do we know about the fetus with certainty?
Well, first of all we know that it is alive, that it represents growing, developing, cells, tissues, and organs, all of which develop increasing complexity and biologic sophistication, resulting in an intact organism, a human baby. Of course, this growth and development does not cease with the production of the baby, but continues for many years afterwards. As can be seen by this description, the fetus is not only alive, but is demonstrably human. I’m not talking about a “potential human” in the way that some parents talk about their teenagers as potential adults. I am referring to the scientific fact that a fetus constitutes a live human, typically 46XX or 46XY, fully and genetically human. In fact, it is the irrefutable humanness of these tissues and organs that have made them be of interest to researchers and scientists.
So, if a fetus is clearly both alive and human, can we justify taking these tissues and organs for scientific experimentation? If so, under what circumstances, and what sort of consent or authorization should be required? In the past century, medicine has made incredible progress resulting from scientific studies involving human tissues and organs, resulting in the development of medications, vaccines, and the entire field of transplantation medicine. Is there any difference between these accomplishments and those that would require the harvesting of body parts and tissues from the fetus?
First, we would have to admit that not all scientific experimentation has been praiseworthy. Studies done by Dr Mengele in Germany, and by American researchers in Guatemala and Tuskegee, were morally abhorrent, and any knowledge gleaned from these would be severely tainted. No one would want to associate our current scientific studies involving the human fetus with such egregious breaches of research ethics.
All that it takes to avoid such a comparison is a consensus on the moral status of the fetus.
Those who have proceeded with experimentation and research on embryonic and fetal cells, tissues, and organs typically have obtained them as the result of an abortion. It is this stark fact that makes such scientific endeavors controversial, because they have proceeded without the aforementioned consensus on the moral status of the fetus.
Because we know that the fetus is alive, and human, we must find some explanation for why it should not be treated with the same dignity that we accord all other human lives. The most frequent argument offered is that, although it is a human life, it is not a human person. Various criteria are offered for a definition of personhood, but none have been found universally acceptable. We thus have a standoff between those who would protect this early vulnerable human life and those that would deny that it deserves protection.
In order to resolve such an ethical dilemma, the guiding principle is this: one is morally permitted to take such a life once you can demonstrate with moral certainty that the life is not human. It is a concept that can be exemplified by the situation faced by a hunter when he sees a bush shaking. He may sincerely believe that it is a deer in the bush, but if he kills it prior to determining with certainty what it is that he is killing, he will be morally responsible (as well as legally) if he has in fact killed the farmer’s cow, or worse yet, the farmer.
As we can see, two deeply held, but opposing viewpoints need not be resolved unless someone intends to act upon them. Then, the one who intends to take the action resulting in the death of the disputed entity must not do so unless they can first show with moral certainty that their perception of its moral worth is irrefutable. Those who would not disturb the normal progression of its life bear no such burden. It’s my contention that such proof does not exist, and deliberate fetal destruction for scientific purposes should not proceed until it does.
Moreover, without disputing the arguable necessity of research on fetal tissue, I would also point out that harvesting it in such a way is unnecessary.
Not only do cell lines already exist that were produced in such a fashion, but new cell lines could be obtained from fetal tissues harvested from spontaneous miscarriages. This is not a theoretical alternative. Georgetown University has a professor who has patented a method of isolating, processing, and cryopreserving fetal cells from second trimester (16 – 20 week gestation) miscarriages. These have already been obtained and are stored in Georgetown freezers.
Moreover, the present practices of obtaining fetal tissues and organs would seem to go against the procedures that have been approved for others who harvest tissues and organs donated for transplantation. First, we follow a strict rule, the dead donor rule. It states that vital unpaired organs cannot be obtained unless the donor has died a natural death. This obviously is not the case in an induced abortion.
Moreover, such tissues or organs cannot be harvested without consent of the patient or their proper surrogate. In pediatrics, parents are considered the normal proper surrogate. However, this interpretation rests on the presumption that the parent is acting in the best interests of the individual. It is difficult to sustain such an interpretation when it is the same parent who has just consented to the abortive destruction of the individual from whom those tissues and organs would be obtained.
We are at a difficult time in our nation’s history. We demonstrate much moral ambiguity in our approach to the human fetus. We have decided that we can legally abort the same fetus that might otherwise be a candidate for fetal surgery, even using the same indications as justification for acts that are diametrically opposed.
We call it the fetus if it is to be aborted and its tissues and organs transferred to a scientific lab. We call it a baby, even at the same stage of gestation, when someone plans to keep it and bring it into their home.
Language has consequences, but it can also reflect our conflicts. We are a nation justly proud of the progress and achievements of our biomedical research, but lifesaving research cannot and should not require the destruction of life for it to go forward. If we cannot act with moral certainty regarding the appropriate respect and dignity of the fetus, we cannot morally justify its destruction.
Alternatives clearly exist that are less controversial, and moral arguments exist that support our natural abhorrence at the trafficking of human fetal parts. Surely we can, and surely we must, find a better way.
Dr G. Kevin Donovan is Director of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University.
Exactly!
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Foetus is Latin for “Baby”.
It’s the very word used in Luke 1:41, where it says, “...the babe leaped in her womb...”, talking about John the Baptist’s in-utero reaction when his Aunt Mary entered the room bearing Jesus in her womb.
I agree, very well done.
Ambiguous definitions and corruption of the language result in the collapse of a culture.
Now that's news to me!
Abortion is the consequence of a preponderance of women who do not want to continue their pregnancy, now in excess of 50 millioon since roe v Wade. The rights of these women to determine the control of their bodies has been held to be sacrosanct. The dilemma is the baby that is disposed at the whim of its mother. Abortion is fine unless it means taking another life. That is the great stumbling block of our age. If we are to survive with any morality in tact we must find for the right to life of the baby.
Everyone knows darned well that the fetus is a human being, a human child, a human person, from the first moment of their creation. None of us needs a bioethicist to explain this to us. It’s self-evident.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...”
— The Declaration of Independence
Which means that, according to the laws of God, according to the first natural law principles of our republic, and according to the absolute, explicit, imperative requirements of our Constitution, the supreme law of our land, they MUST be equally protected.
“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
— The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
“No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
— The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
“You shall not murder.”
— Exodus 20:13
It’s not optional.
The Tuskegee syphilis study may have become ethically flawed, over time. But it certainly wasn't comparable to anything Mengele did.
I even see wild claims, presented as history, that the Tuskegee doctors deliberately infected men with syphilis. Absolutely not true. The study recruited men who were already infected. These men received care and treatment. Problem was, at the time the study began, there was no effective treatment for syphilis.
Then antibiotics were developed during WWII. Apparently these newly-invented antibiotics were not offered to the men who had enrolled themselves in the study, many years earlier. That was the moral problem with the Tuskegee study.
Would antibiotics, if offered, have helped any of these men, who at that point may have been in the tertiary stage of syphilis? I suspect it was too late for these men to have been helped. Should the new medicine have been offered to them? Probably. Although I think it is debatable whether a doctor should offer medication, when it is very unlikely to help a patient. An analogy might be starting chemotherapy on a patient who is already in final-stage organ failure.
Congress has failed for 45 years to commission the legal definition of when human life begins.
It can only be at conception because there is no other demarkation along the continuum of cell division that can be scientifically established as the point of being human.
No debate in me. Abortion is murder. Period.
It states that vital unpaired organs cannot be obtained unless the donor has died a natural death.
Would natural death include an accidental death like a car crash?
We can pretend that there are differing degrees of inhumanity, but the fact remains that BOTH Mengele and the Tuskegee researchers performed "experiments" on their victims instead of treating them.
I even see wild claims, presented as history, that the Tuskegee doctors deliberately infected men with syphilis. Absolutely not true. The study recruited men who were already infected. These men received care and treatment.
First of all, the Tuskegee victims were NEVER INFORMED that they had syphilis. But more importantly, while they were TOLD that they were receiving medical care, they were actually studied for several months BEFORE receiving any type of treatment (and that treatment was known to be toxic).
Then antibiotics were developed during WWII. Apparently these newly-invented antibiotics were not offered to the men who had enrolled themselves in the study, many years earlier. That was the moral problem with the Tuskegee study.
The Tuskegee program continued for THREE DECADES after penicillin was known to be an effective treatment. This is more than a "moral problem," it is barbaric.
Would antibiotics, if offered, have helped any of these men, who at that point may have been in the tertiary stage of syphilis? I suspect it was too late for these men to have been helped.
The FACT that many of these men survived not only the four decades of the experiment, but for decades afterward, would seem to indicate that they WOULD have benefited from medical treatment. Additionally, many untreated syphilitics NEVER enter the tertiary stage, the "researchers" certainly would have known who did and who didn't.
Should the new medicine have been offered to them? Probably. Although I think it is debatable whether a doctor should offer medication, when it is very unlikely to help a patient. An analogy might be starting chemotherapy on a patient who is already in final-stage organ failure.
Probably?!
You think that it's acceptable to withhold medication for THREE DECADES based on your opinion of if it will help? Keep in mind that when it was found that penicillin was effective doctors DID give it to patients why syphilis who had been infected for as long as the men at Tuskegee.
This is what I call the liberals "Poof Theory" of when human life begins (and should be ridiculed at every opportunity):
When a pregnant woman decides she's going to keep her baby, a signal travels from her brain, goes down the spine, worms its way into the womb, and POOF! It's a baby!
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