Market-driven medicine threatens human dignity, bioethicists say

Published: 2007-10-05

SAN FRANCISCO (CNS) -- Market-driven medical technology applied at the beginning and end of life is a growing threat to human dignity, speakers for the National Catholic Bioethics Center told a conference in San Francisco Oct. 3. Catholics must counter with an uncompromising defense of Christian ethics that also encourages lawful innovation to nurture and sustain life, the speakers said, adding that Catholic teaching provides the most reasonable framework for decisions about human life in any clinical or research setting. "I always encourage people that if you're ever confronted with a teaching of the church you don't understand and that at first looks problematic, stop and ask yourself what dimension of human dignity the church sees being threatened in this procedure that we won't allow," said John Haas, president of the bioethics center. The Philadelphia-based center is a scholarly institution that advises the Vatican and the nation's bishops. Oakland Bishop Allen H. Vigneron told Catholic San Francisco, archdiocesan newspaper, that the main issues on which the church finds itself "at odds with a lot of the trends in our culture" were in-vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research and end-of-life issues. Attracting 200 Catholic educators and health-care workers from throughout the Bay Area, the conference took place in the city that hosts California's $3 billion stem-cell research institute.

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