Vatican conference on “New Frontiers of Genetics and the Danger of Eugenics”

The Pope
has warned of the dangers of a new eugenics. Addressing scientists at a
Vatican conference on "New Frontiers of Genetics and the Danger of
Eugenics," he said that man is not just biological material. "If man is
reduced to an object of experimental manipulation from the first stage
of development, that would mean that biotechnologies would surrender to
the will of the stronger. Confidence in science cannot forget the
primacy of ethics when human life is at stake."

"Certainly
ideological and racist eugenics, which in the past humiliated man and
provoked untold suffering, are not again being proposed. But a new
mentality is insinuating itself that tends to justify a different
consideration of life and personal dignity based on individual desire
and individual rights. There is thus a tendency to privilege the
capacities for work, efficiency, perfection and physical beauty to the
detriment of other dimensions of existence that are not held to be
valuable.

"In this way the respect that is due to
every human being — even in the presence of a defect in his
development or a genetic illness that could manifest itself in the
course of his life — is weakened, and those children whose life is
judged unworthy of being lived are punished from the moment of
conception." ~ Zenit, Feb 22

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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