Anything Goes | Chuck Weber and Sister Renée Mirkes | Catholic World Report
Reproductive medicine grows ever more disturbing.
In 1978, when doctors introduced Louise Brown, the first “test tube” or in vitro fertilization (IVF) baby, to the world, the international media hailed the event as something just short of the definitive answer to infertility. In Time magazine, Dr. Robert Edwards—one of the brains behind Baby Louise’s birth and the acknowledged godfather of the assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry it spawned—boasted: “This is the first time we’ve solved all the problems at once. We’re at the beginning of the end—not the end of the beginning.”
Now, more than three decades later, a critical look at the direction of the ART industry’s agenda and actions leaves Catholic observers with several troubling ethical and medical questions that might be summed up as: “Where will it all end?”
Coming precisely one decade after the publication of Pope Paul VI’s prophetic encyclical, Humanae Vitae, the initial Catholic response to Baby Louise was ambiguous. Just days before being named Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani expressed his “best wishes to the baby,” suggesting that the parents may “have great merit before God for what they have decided on and asked the doctors to carry out.”
Many Catholic scholars, scientists, and laypersons adopted sentiments similar to those of the pope, only without the helper verb, “may.” Unencumbered by meaningful opposition, the ART industry, a consortium of researchers, medical school professionals, pharmaceutical companies, and others, formed an unofficial alliance with the secular media and quickly evolved into a formidable and profitable presence worldwide.
This is an abomination.
The funny thing is, use Genetic modification to produce higher yields of potatoes or disease resistant onions and all hell breaks loose about tinkering with nature "franken foods" as they say. Danger danger danger!
But tinker with core elements of humanity itself and you can hear a pin drop.
This is an area filled with lies and deceit, and we know who the author of those are don't we.
A woman's magazine celebrates a child with with two fathers manufactured from a "donor" egg and incubated in an anonymous women's body, hired for this purpose and nothing is said, no criticism, in public anyway, the power of political correctness and money shuts down all discussion.
An abomination and it frightens me - really frightens me.
Posted by: andrei | Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 07:45 PM
Please note that Pope John Paul I was not at all a supporter of IVF as this article makes him out to be. This story has been spread for the last 30 years on the basis of a single excerpt from his interview. The whole text can be found in English here
http://subcreators.com/blog/2010/10/06/john-paul-i-and-the-nobel-prize-winner/
The text makes it very clear that he fully supported the Church's traditional teaching in this area. He even correctly predicted the rise of a "baby manufacturing industry" such as we are actually seeing today.
Posted by: Lori Pieper | Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 02:23 AM
Is that your translation Lori? A great service to TRUTH you have done if so.
This is the fundamental issue of our age - and we must stand up to what are Blasphemies and direct confrontations to God's purpose for us.
Posted by: andrei | Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 01:08 PM
Yes, it's my translation. It's coming out in book form soon with some of his other wrings. so keep checking the link I put up to my blog.
Posted by: Lori Pieper | Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:34 PM