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Posted on 01/04/2007 5:51:39 PM PST by Coleus
This article reports on a 1993 lecture the late French geneticist and pro-life pioneer Dr. Jerome Lejeune delivered at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C. This story originally appeared in the January 1994 Columbia and is a companion article to the January 2007 "By Their Works" profile of Knight and pro-life entrepreneur Bill Schneeberger.
Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the French geneticist, still marvels at the circumstances that caused him to travel from his laboratory in Paris to a Tennessee courtroom to give expert testimony about when life begins. The 1989 case involved a divorced couple, Mary Sue and Junior Davis, who had very different views on the disposition of seven frozen embryos fertilized prior to the couple’s separation. The woman sought custody so that she could one day carry a child to term. Her ex-husband ws opposed; he no longer wanted to become a father.
Contacted by the woman’s representatives and touched by her plight, Lejeune testified there is indisputable scientific evidence that human life begins at conception. “I asked the judge to make the decision of Solomon and give the embryos to the parent who wanted them to live,” he recalled. Lejeune’s point was that an embryo has a human nature from the very beginning and should not be treated merely as “matter.” Convinced by Lejeune’s testimony, the judge ruled in the woman’s favor. But the state’s highest court later ruled that the embryos were not human beings. That decision was in turn upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (an institution that Lejeune acknowledges he finds it difficult to hold in high esteem).
Jerome Lejeune, internationally acclaimed expert in the field of genetics, is one of the world’s foremost defenders of the dignity of human life — with emphasis on the word human — from its earliest moments. Professor of genetics at Rene Descartes University in Paris, Lejeune discovered the chromosomal abnormality that causes Down syndrome. For his research, he received the Kennedy Award and the William Allen Memorial Award from the American Society of Human Genetics. He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Medicine in London, the Royal Society of Science in Stockholm and many other distinguished societies.
Lejeune was invited by the Knights of Columbus to present the Michael J. McGivney Lectures of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C. in October. In his talks, he elaborated on his findings concerning the origins of life and the respect owed to each person, who, he emphasized, is not only human from the moment of conception, but unique as well. He told an attentive audience at Providence Hospital that modern biology teaches that ancestors are united to their progeny by a continuous material link, for it is from the fertilization of the female cell — the ovum — by the male cell — the spermatozoon — that a new member of the species will emerge.
Life has a very long history, Lejeune said, but each individual has a very neat beginning — the moment of conception. “The material link I am speaking about is the molecular thread of DNA,” Lejeune continued. “In each reproductive cell, this ribbon is cut into pieces — 23 in our species — and each segment is so carefully coiled and packaged — like a magnetic tape in a mini-cassette, that under the microscope it appears like a little rod, a chromosome. “As soon as the 23 paternally derived chromosomes are united through fertilization to the 23 maternally derived chromosomes, the full genetic information necessary and sufficient to express all the inborn qualities of the new individual is gathered,” Lejeune said. “Exactly as the introduction of a mini-cassette into a tape recorder will allow the restitution of a symphony, the new being begins to express himself as soon as he has been conceived.”
It is curious, Lejeune said, that natural sciences and the sciences of the law tend to speak the same language. “Of an individual enjoying a robust health, a biologist would say he has a good constitution. Of a society developing harmoniously to the benefit of all its members, a legislator would say that it has an equitable constitution.” The chromosomes are the table of the law of life, and when they have been gathered in the new being they fully spell out his personal constitution.
What is bewildering is the minuteness involved, Lejeune said. “It is hard to believe, though beyond any possible doubt, that the whole genetic information necessary and sufficient to build our body and even our brain, the most powerful problem-solving device, even able to analyze the laws of the universe, could be epitomized so that its material substratum could fit neatly on the point of a needle.”
“Even more impressive, during the maturation of the reproductive cells, the genetic information is reshuffled in so many ways that each conceptus receives an entirely original combination which has never occurred before and will never again. Each conceptus is unique and thus irreplaceable,” Lejeune said.
Because the life of everyone begins at the moment of conception, when the egg is fertilized by sperm, the single cell that results has a unique genetic code, a blueprint that contains “the whole necessary and sufficient information” defining all of that individual’s human characteristics. To explain the DNA within each cell that contains a person’s genetic code, Lejeune cited the bar code used to differentiate items in a supermarket. “Each of us has his own personal bar code” that can be recognized and studied using the high-powered instruments of modern science, he said. “So the teaching of the Church on how we should respect all forms of life is also good biology,” he said.
At a conference in Bucharest some years ago, Lejeune was asked if he holds his views because he is a Catholic or because he is a scientist. “I answered by saying that if the Church taught differently than it does about when life begins, then I would to, for scientific reasons, cease being a Catholic,” he reclled. He expressed his conviction that the Holy Spirit would not permit the Church to teach such a thing. “All scientists know when life begins,” Lejeune stated. “If the scientic establishment had told the truth, then the Supreme Court would not have said in Roe v. Wade that science does not know when life begins.”
Lejeune said Roe v. Wade is like Dred Scott, the 19th century court ruling that blacks were not human and therefore slavery was not wrong. “But Roe is worse,” he said. “The court certainly knew that blacks were human, but they chose to ignore the evidence. But at least that court did not pretend, as the Roe court did, that the evidence did not exist.” So why, he was asked, did the scientific community keep quiet? His answer was characteristically forthright. “Some scientists don’t want to be constrained from doing the things they want to do, so they avoid saying unpopular things,” he stated. “It’s a matter of pride, and prizes. The know they won’t get the grants if they tell the truth about when life begins.”
“There is a curious phenomenon at work in your country, sometimes called ‘political correctness,’” Lejeune continued. “You have so much freedom and yet you are no allowed to know the truth. In France we might have 40 million opinions about the dignity that should be accorded to the embryo, but no one denies the scientific truth that it is human.” Asked at one of the lectures about researchers at George Washington University who had just reported they had conducted experiments in the cloning of human embryos, Lejeune said that this event was not a breakthrough because scientists have had the technology for this for many years. It was instead a “symptom of a severe disease of spirit.” It is necessary to remember that not everything that can be done should be done, he stated. He said that genetic experimentatin should be for the purpose of prevention and cure of hereditary disease, and that the defense of life and the dignity of the human person must be of paramount concern in genetic research.
Research in cloning human embryos is unfortunate “because it gives the impression we are masters of our fate and can discard and delete as we see fit,” he said. “There is a terrible temptation to think that we are dealing with just matter and nothing more.” “When we respect people because they are big, beautiful, powerful, then Hitler and Mengele will have won the war,” he said. “I refuse to accept that.” “The trick is to continue with experiments that will cure diseases but without violating the embryo,” he said. “We need a touchstone to do this, and the only one which will suffice is found in Matthew 25, 40: ‘Whatsoever you do to these, the least of my brethren, you do also to me.’” When he reported this story, William Ryan was the director of the Office for Media Relations at the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, D.C.
Life begins when God says it does.
I'm the same genetic person I was at day one to the day I die.
5:15 on Friday?
AM or PM ?
Human life began millions of years ago and has been evolving ever since. It can't be flipped on and off as a light switch. It is illogical to say an embryo formed by a living sperm and a living egg that came from two living individuals is not alive.
Dr. Jerome Lejeune discovered the extra chromosome that causes Down Syndrome and devoted his career to treating the children who suffer from it. He also happens to have been a powerful advocate for the unborn.
God has truly blessed you with great wisdom! Thank you for this response!
PM, just like the Who song.
Excellent article.
Adam? :)
Spontaneously, by happenstance, or by design ?
If you have to kill it to get rid of it, then it must be alive.
The real question, "When does a new individual begin?" And once you are asking the right question, the right answer there becomes pretty clear, too.
ML/NJ
It's an argument I haven't heard before, but....
So I read the Scriptures that say that "life is in the blood." What that says to me is that when a fetus has blood of its own, it is alive. Perhaps life exists prior to that, as well.
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