IVF prize ignores moral issues
VATICAN CITY — Honoring one of the inventors of in vitro fertilization with the Nobel Prize for Medicine “ignores all the ethical problems” connected to the creation of so-called “test tube babies,” an Italian professor told Vatican Radio.
British scientist Robert Edwards, a retired professor at the University of Cambridge, England, won Oct. 4 for the development of in vitro fertilization. His work led to the 1978 birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first “test-tube baby.”
Four million more IVF births have taken place, and Edwards’ work is a milestone in modern medicine, the prize committee said. Edwards made a huge mark because he took livestock breeding techniques and applied them to people, Lucio Romano, president of the Italian association Science and Life, told Vatican Radio. “This absolutely does not represent progress for the human person,” he said.
He said awarding the Nobel to Edwards ignores the ethical problems connected with IVF, in which human eggs are removed from a woman and fertilized in a lab. The fertilized eggs are placed in a woman’s uterus with the hope the pregnancy will progress normally. Usually, multiple eggs are fertilized with only a few being implanted.
A 2008 document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith repeated earlier Vatican condemnations of the technology because it separates procreation from the conjugal act in marriage, and because unused embryos are often discarded.
From October 8, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
