WASHINGTON — The Vatican’s first authoritative statement on reproductive science in 21 years triggered intense debate Friday about some of the most contentious issues in modern biological research, including stem-cell research, designer babies, cloning and a host of techniques used to prevent pregnancy and to help infertile couples have children.
The broad, 32-page document from the Catholic Church’s highest rule-making authority condemns as immoral the destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells or treat infertility, and denounces any attempts at more futuristic possibilities such as cloning people or using gene therapy to enhance the human race.
But the church also decried procedures already commonly used to help couples have children, such as the freezing of unfertilized eggs and embryos; the injection of sperm into eggs; and genetic testing of embryos to identify those with defects. The document also decried the morning-after pill and the RU-486 abortion pill.
Although many of the arguments in “Dignitas Personae” — Latin for “the dignity of a person” — have been made before by Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, this church “instruction” from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is far more authoritative and made a number of new declarations.
It reflects the Vatican’s desire to focus attention on ethical questions raised by a new generation of technologies that are becoming increasingly common in the United States and elsewhere.
“This is significant in the sense that the church has now laid down a marker on these important issues,” said Thomas Murray of the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank.
“The church has now dug in and committed itself to an official position.”
Catholic and non-Catholic scholars were scouring the document — which influences Catholic doctors, patients and researchers and guides priests on how to counsel the 67 million U.S. Catholics — for any subtle changes in church positions. Although many U.S. Catholics do not follow many of the church’s teachings, its pronouncements have spurred years of ethical and philosophical debate.
The document also could play a role in political debates. President-elect Barack Obama, for example, has promised to end restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.
In the document, the church argues that life begins at conception and so anything that results in the destruction of an embryo is immoral.
The church also objects to any technology that separates procreation from sex between a married heterosexual couple, which makes many modern infertility therapies, such as in vitro fertilization, “illicit.” Other types of infertility treatments are permitted, such as surgery to open blocked fallopian tubes.
The document for the first time raised questions about whether it is moral for people to “adopt” embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. While the practice might be “praiseworthy” in some ways, the Vatican document warned that it could help perpetuate the creation of more embryos.
The church endorsed research using cells from umbilical-cord blood and adult stem cells, and for the first time encouraged research into alternative methods that have been proposed for obtaining embryonic stem cells, such as from cells altered so that they could never become embryos.
The document also for the first time said that vaccines that originally might have been developed using cells from aborted fetuses were acceptable.
But futuristic possibilities such as cloning and genetic engineering, allowing parents to select the traits they want in their babies, would in the church’s view put humans perilously close to playing the role of God.
