Many learn IVF is wrong only too late
Many Catholics don’t learn until it is too late that in-vitro fertilization as a remedy for infertility is gravely contrary to Catholic moral teaching, a leading Catholic bioethicist said Oct. 9.
That is unfortunate because there are more effective methods of assisting couples that do not require artificial conception in a laboratory, said Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which was established in 1972 to provide ethical analysis on scientific developments, particularly in life issues, using standards of natural law and Catholic Church teaching.
“Laboratory glassware is not the way new human members of our family should enter the world,” said Father Pacholczyk, the center’s director of education. “A human being has the right to be conceived under his or her mother’s heart.”
Father Pacholczyk made his comments at a seminar sponsored by the Archdiocese of San Francisco, “Rediscovering the Family in a Technological Age: Bioethical Considerations.”
His remarks came days after the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to British scientist Robert Edwards for his contributions to IVF. The first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978, and the Nobel committee estimated that 4 million IVF babies have been born since.
Lucio Romano, president of the Italian association Science and Life, said the honor “ignores all the ethical problems” and noted that IVF emerged from livestock breeding techniques.
Msgr. Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said he recognized that Edwards “ushered in a new and important chapter in the field of human reproduction in which the best results are visible to everyone, beginning with Louise Brown.”
However, “without Edwards there wouldn’t be a market for oocytes (immature egg cells), without Edwards there wouldn’t be freezers full of embryos waiting to be transferred in utero or, more likely, to be used for research or to die abandoned and forgotten by everyone,” the monsignor said in a statement released by the Vatican press office Oct. 4.
He also said that Edwards “opened the wrong door” to fertility treatments and did not confront the underlying causes of infertility.
The Vatican-based International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations also expressed its dismay about the prize.
“Although IVF has brought happiness to the many couples who have conceived through this process, it has done so at an enormous cost. That cost is the undermining of the dignity of the human person,” said the federation’s president, Jose Simon Castellvi.
“As Catholic doctors we recognize the pain that infertility brings to a couple, but equally we believe that the research and treatment methods needed to solve the problems of infertility have to be conducted within an ethical framework which respects the special dignity of the human embryo, which is no different from that of a mature adult with a brilliant mind,” he wrote.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned the use of in-vitro fertilization in two separate documents; “Donum Vitae” published in 1987, and “Dignitas Personae,” issued in 2008. The Vatican said that IVF is never acceptable because it removes conception from the marital act and because it treats a baby as a product to be manipulated, violating the child’s integrity as a human being with an immortal soul from the moment of conception.
Approximately 240,000 babies are born using IVF technology every year in the United States, and there are at least a half million “leftover” embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen, Father Pacholczyk said. According to the IVF industry, approximately five embryos die for each live birth, and that may actually be 10 per live birth if those discarded in the lab are taken into account, Father Pacholczyk said.
With IVF, multiple eggs extracted from the mother are placed in a Petri dish and flooded with sperm. The resulting embryos are analyzed for viability and some are inserted by a lab worker into the mother’s uterus. Three-quarters of IVF attempts fail, but IVF continues to be the infertility remedy of choice of most doctors and often the only option presented to couples struggling with infertility, including Catholics, Father Pacholczyk said.
“Even within the Church this is not an issue that has been properly addressed,” Father Pacholczyk said, partly because of a natural bias toward helping a couple have a baby and partly because the in-vitro technology and the moral problems with in-vitro are not well understood.
The bioethicist said he has even heard of parish priests advising couples who were considering IVF to “follow your conscience.” Thus, he said, “I suspect Catholics are doing this at pretty much the same rate as non-Catholics.”
The Church’s opposition to IVF is difficult for many to understand, said Father Pacholczyk, recounting how a woman whose grandchild was conceived via IVF asked him, “How can the Church tell me my granddaughter is not a gift and a blessing?”
“Every child is a gift. The problem is not with the child. It is the choice made by his or her parents,” Father Pacholczyk said, recommending couples who have in the past chosen IVF turn to the sacrament of reconciliation.
Not all couples can conceive, Father Pacholczyk said, but, “If God closes the door on fertility for you, there is some other place there for you.”
Father Pacholczyk said a much more effective method of addressing infertility is NaPro Technology, developed by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, the director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and the National Center for Women’s Health in Omaha, Neb. Dr. Hilgers was made a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in 1994.
Father Pacholczyk called NaPro Technology “a wonderful, powerful approach.”
NaPro monitors a woman’s cycles and tests the husband to pinpoint the fertility issues and then uses drugs and surgery to treat the couple. For example, in the case of the common problem of endometriosis, which is often not spotted by gynecologists or fertility doctors, NaPro cures the endometriosis and the couple conceives naturally 51 percent of the time, compared to an IVF success rate of 21 percent, according to NaPro statistics. Endometriosis is a condition in which tissue similar to that which lines the uterus monthly grows outside the uterus, often on or near the ovaries or fallopian tubes.
By Valerie Schmalz
From October 15, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
