By Marie Mulvenna

Such complex medical-moral issues as organ replacement, reproductive biology, behavior control, embryo transplants, fetal experimentation, genetic cloning and cryobiology were among the many subjects presented to health care leaders at the Catholic Health Assembly here by Father Albert S. Moraczewski, president of the one-year-old Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center in St. Louis.

In presenting a synoptic description of the center’s activities, Father Moraczewski explained that its purpose was to identify and study the ethical and moral issues that will face the health care field as a result of advances in science and technology.

“We are looking at the issues that are rising in the future, those just coming down the road,” he said, adding that the Center would provide Catholic hospital groups and other health-related structures with information on such issues and provide some provisional ethical guidelines.

“There are countless complex and delicate medical-moral issues arising constantly from developments in science,” he said, terming the center different from all other existing research groups or foundations because it is Catholic and wishes to serve as an arm of the U. S. Bishops.

In a dramatic film presentation, the center gave delegates a graphic view of future medical-moral topics they might face in the near future. The possibility of cloning, whereby many sets of identical individuals can be reproduced, is entirely possible by the year 2000.

“This has already been done with lower animals,” the priest explained, adding that it is asexual reproduction. He said it could result in the reproduction of many series of so-called “perfect” individuals, carrying with it innumerable ethical problems.

A descriptive presentation on the freezing of sperm and ova detailed the processes which could result in the “test-tube” baby to be later produced at any time in later years by scientists. Ova and sperm could be selected with genetic preferences, later to result in the “ideal” combination of a living being.

Also discussed was the concept of transplanting embryo to artificial wombs for the remainder of development, or “wombs for rent” as Father Moraczewski termed it.

Such techniques are replete with issues he told the assembled delegates, pointing out that in the area of embryo transplants alone questions could be raised as to who was the real mother, the female producing the egg or the female whose womb brought the embryo to term.

On the topic of fetal experimentation, Father Moraczewski said such research has been done already by the administering of drugs while the fetus is in the womb and by follow-up research after the fetus has been aborted.

He said the government has stepped into the area of experimentation on a living fetus, stating that “the ethical dimensions of this are far from being resolved.”

In the wide area of behavior control, he said ethical questions had been raised about the popular topic of psychosurgery, giving as an example the use of such surgery in California to control violent prisoners.

Father Moraczewski also referred to the “ticklish problems” surrounding the subject of individual rights vs. societal needs including in this area the question of sterilization due to genetic problems and the possibility of requiring human participation in experimentation.

As to organ replacement, he said questions of what criteria must be used in selecting the donor and the recipient had already come to the surface. Cryobiology, the freezing of life in a state of suspended animation, has brought up the question of continuing life after freezing and its ethical implications.

Th center, called a “daughter of the Catholic Hospital Association,” which sponsored its birth, maintains a viable relationship with the hierarchy and is set up to provide, through research and education, moral guidelines on ethical questions that the center first identifies and then investigates in depth.

The center is intended to provide a forum for coordinating and evaluating the research on numerous issues of medical, scientific, philosophical and theological nature and to prepare research findings to be used as bases for official promulgation of moral guidelines.