WELLINGTON The Vaticans new instruction Dignitas Personae addressing bioethical questions is relevant to New Zealand, according to a local researcher. John Kleinsman of The Nathaniel Centre, the Church’s national bioethics centre, said the new Instruction, released on December 12 and approved by Pope Benedict XVI, has been long-awaited.
It provides specific responses to questions raised by recent developments in biomedical research at the beginning of life and updates the 1987 Instruction Donum Vitae.
Issues addressed in Dignitas Personae include in vitro fertilisation and the cryopreservation of embryos, gene therapy, embryo adoption, pregnancy prevention methods that act after fertilisation, human cloning, stem-cell research and human-animal hybrids.
Mr Kleinsman, who has worked on submissions to New Zealand government agencies on issues like those, said the new Instruction has a two-fold purpose. It is hoped it will contribute to the formation of conscience and also encourage research that is respectful of the dignity of every human person from the first moment of existence.
[It] emphasises that developments in understanding human life in its initial stages are positive and worthy of support when they promote the integral good of persons; when they seek to overcome or correct pathologies and when they succeed in re-establishing the normal functionings of human procreation.
[But] they are negative when they involve the destruction of human beings or when they contradict the dignity of the human person, he added.
Mr Kleinsman said the Instruction locates the ethical issues in the Church’s tradition of social justice.
Technology provides a means for us to co-operate in the creative power of God, but the application of some developments oppresses the right to life of a distinct category of persons those in the first stages of human life.
We have a duty to stand with those who are most vulnerable.
The Instruction recognises the often-competing desires generated by biomedical research at the start of life, Mr Kleinsman said. Examples include the desire to cure illnesses or infertility, set against the protection of life from its first moments.
Commitment to the dignity of the human person provides us with a way of recognising the authentic moral good, he said.
