Catholic Fire

New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Board (ESSCB) decided on Thursday to commit funds to pay women to have their eggs harvested for embryo research. A member of the panel’s ethics board charged that the move was a “gross exploitation” of poor women and did not take into account the procedure’s health risks. My understanding is that egg harvesting is a painful procedure which can be very dangerous to women. Risks include moderate to serious ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome (OHSS) which results in maladies ranging from bloating and nausea to infertility, organ failure and death. There was reportedly no period of public comment for the board’s decision. Fr. Thomas Berg, a member of the ESSCB’s Ethics Committee and Executive Director of the Westchester Institute, criticized the board. “Without any involvement from the public, who might like to know that state cash will be used as an inducement for underprivileged and cash-strapped women to undergo a risky and potentially dangerous pro...

In response to the National Insitutes of Health’s request for public comment, Msgr. David J. Malloy, general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has written an 11-page critique of the agency’s Health’s draft guidelines on embryonic stem-cell research. “The central fact of science relevant to this issue is the fact that the living human embryo at the blastocyst stage-- the being who will be destroyed to obtain embryonic stem cells for research funded under these Guidelines-- is a human being at a very early stage of his or her development,” he writes. “This consensus does not rely on a particular religious view, or a particular theory about ‘personhood.’ It is a basic human insight, a recognition that each one of us began life as an embryo and engaged in continuous development through the stages off fetus, infant, newborn, toddler, etc. to reach maturity.” More Related Post: ACTION ALERT: Today is Last Day to Comment on Embryonic Stem Cell Research