EDITORIAL
CORRESPONDENCE Hummmse VOt~ Hicksville, N.Y. To the Editors: Isn't what Father Curran is objecting to, the debate between the professional theologians and the hierarchy on Humanae...
...The momentum remains with science and medicine...
...Thus Donald Chalkley of the National Institutes of Health is quoted as saying, in justification of the failures inherent in the new methods: "When a husband and wife go to the bedroom and experiment, the experiment will fail twothirds of the time...
...We have discovered how to control the most delicate processes of life but not how to control the processes of discovery...
...Despite long-standing controversy over in ~itro fertilization and reimplantation, the decision to proceed was entirely in the hands of two interested researchers and a willing couple...
...The pattern is clear when defenders of in vitro fertilization and reimplantation dismiss concerns about the loss of nascent life by pointing out that abortion is widespread anyway...
...SpE~/al ewe-year rate $32...
...It is only common sense that the burden of proof should rest on those who would continue with test-tube procreation...
...The means are but an extension of the human interventions we already accept--in fact, celebrate--when nature proves harsh or recalcitrant...
...IN DEFENSE OF SOLZHENITSYN:John Garvey 553 THE POPE & THE AMEHICAN MIND: Raymond A. Schroth 558 AGENDA FOR THE PAPACY:W~the Ciburclb Needs trmthe NextPeIDe: SHAKINGDOWN & SORTING OUT: Richard P. McBrien 510 GENUINE COMMUNICATION: Charles Davis 5el A MODEL OF HUMANITY: Leonard Swidler 563 FLA~B...
...Meanwhile the priorities of medicine are further distorted, and attention is diverted from the need to find parents by adoption for millions of already living children...
...1 September 1978:548...
...CemmenweEI Is Ixdoced in Reader's Guide te Pnriedlcel Llter~re, Cgtf~/Ic Per/ed~cof Index, Index of American pnrind/ced Verse, and 8eel Review D/gent...
...Foro/gn $20...
...Bonaventure, N.Y...
...Society and Democracy in Germany...
...It is too certain about abortion at the very first stages of development, and too ready to cast scientific or technological developments as dangerous steps on a slippery slope...
...However the medical-moral theory of consent might be applied at this stage of life, the idea behind that theory is to prevent the person from being treated as an object, as a "product...
...to date Eva/faMe throng& UBIversity Mlcredllms...
...Obviously the Pope and his advisers miss it[ What of the parallel decline in Catholic schooling, when never before in our history have more children been isolated in school for more of the day, more of the year, and more of their formative years...
...Artificial insemination has been employed for decades Commonweal: 547 without any of the drastic consequences sometimes predicted and now conjured up in connection with in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer...
...Foreign $36...
...Brown's uterus, provoked cries of "Miracle...
...Time magazine noted "the furious scientific competition between rival fertility researchers," and nationai rivalry waits in the wing--American researchers have bemoaned the fact that HEW's ethics guidelines kept America from being first with a test-tube baby...
...The logic of replaceable parts moves reproduction another step toward the morality of manufacture...
...Our apprehension is deepened by the way in which this historic step came about...
...It inevitably involves the foreseeable rejection of fertilized ova, or even the calculated abortion of defective fetuses...
...MIcrdlm$ frem Ye...
...To the Editors: Father Charles E. Curran [July 7] still sounds like a haughty (Continued on page 575)NEWS & VIEWS: 540COIgRESPONDENCE: 54T EDITORIAL:54T DAMN THE REFUGEES & FULL SPEED AJEAUD: Thomas Powers 540 ADORTIONS AND ADMIKqlONS: Paul H. Connolly 5S...
...There was no groundwork of primate experimentation...
...Ten Years Later," July 7) It took time, patience, and education for Europeans to understand our Constitution and pluralism, while Americans were hardly aware of what the Popes condemned as "modernism" and Ralf Dahrendorf descrihes as the German heritage of Prussian state authoritarianism...
...It is a gross, depersonalizing interference in the "natural" reproductive process...
...Not only would it be a good example for the laity (sure to be included in Vatican III, as the "experts" were at Vatican II) but the hierarchy is a more "credible communicator" for the average Catholic than Herr Professor of Theology...
...Then let the researchers argue their case...
...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO TEST-TBE BABIES Louise Brown may have been the first human to make the cover of Time before she was even born...
...Ethical reservations about in vitro fertilization have appeared in medical journals for eight years but talk is cheap when there are still no sanctions against, and many incentives for, scientific ~airs accomplis...
...In sum, it stands in a line of technological horrors, from gas chambers to nuclear weaponry, and it points directly toward the genetic engineering and assembly-line breeding of Huxley's dystopia...
...Thinking about "test-tube babies" seems to fall into three categories: The anathema response: The entire innovation is morally unthinkable...
...If artificial insemination allowed the substitution of a donor's sperm for the father's, now in vitro fertilization allows the substitution of a donor's egg for the mother's, and reimplantation further allows the substitution of a donor's womb...
...M~V H. mc~l;~s St...
...The remarkable facts of her conception, in a laboratory dish containing her mother's surgically removed egg and her father's sperm, followed by reimplantation in Mrs...
...Well, that is one way of characterizing what husbands and wives are doing, perhaps a thought-provoking way, but in the end hardly satisfactory...
...The goal is an ancient one: for childless couples to have offspring...
...So we are of the apprehension party...
...300 N. Zeeb Read, Au Arbor, MicA...
...Procreation has been loosened just that much more--and rather decisively--from the knot of personal determinants, sexual intimacy, and marital relations in Which it has been bound...
...All this in the wake of a debate over recombinant DNA that revealed how skin-deep was the scientific community's willingness to entertain any degree of public control...
...Where the first response is dogmatic, the second isdeluding...
...It demonstrates, instead, the power of science and technology to move us willy-nilly into difficulties we have not demonstrated the will or the skill to resolve...
...And please, without the cant about Galileo and the Dark Ages...
...S/~o copF 7k...
...Genetic manipulation, the use of surrogate mothers, or the total extra-corporeal and extra-familial creation of human individuals are dangers that ought to be faced on their own terms, and not forestalled at the expense of those who could benefit now from medical advances...
...10016 TehqebEme: (212) MU 3-Xq3 A review of Pgbllc Affaks, LDerofsre and the Arts...
...5a4 MUST THOUGHT DE MERELY POIGNANT'?: Michael Harrington 51g$ DOORS: David O'Connell, William P. Wood, Norris Merchant, Ronald De Fee, Dennis Vellucci 508 ILLESTRATIONS: Photo o~ Hannah Arcade, page 5Q7, by Rhode Nachans JAMES O'GARA: ld/terJOHN DERDY: Mgeeghtg fdNor RAYMOND A. SCHItOTH: Associate Edit~ANNE M. ROI~RTSON: gdtee/4/ duhd~at COLIN L. WESTIRINJCK,JE.: MoviesJOHN PAMO8~ Poetry FRANK GrrIJEJN: WaskInlrf~N8 BRIAN WICKIR: Oregt IrlfalnALAEN WOOOltOW: Pgrfs HENRY TEN KORIINAAR: RameDqSMOND PISJ~ER: Deddle EDWARD S. SKILLIN: PsblisknrRUTH E. TAYLOR: Advertfsheg MelEger St~f: LINDA F. KAYIJER,HARRirrll RALSRY COMMONWEAL 232 MAOISON AVE...
...To the Editors: Isn't what Father Curran is objecting to, the debate between the professional theologians and the hierarchy on Humanae Vitae, the very same process he finds so praiseworthy in the debate on separation of church and state...
...MRS...
...Not even the unfortunate trade in publicity surrounding young Louise has revealed many scientific and ethical aspects of the case...
...The proper step now is to maintain HEW's moratorium on in vitro fertilization experiments and to broaden it with legislative and professional restrictions...
...It seems to me the theologians should lower the volume to "advise and consent" to the teaching magisterium of the hierarchy...
...To justify today's developments because they are not much different from yesterday's is truly to pile ambiguity upon ambiguity, to construct a morality on sand...
...as well as worried invocations of Huxley's Brave New World...
...Which is exactly what the method of create-and-discard-thefailures threatens to do...
...The assimilation response: Neither the end nor the means involved in "test-tube babies" are drastic departures...
...It is unrealistic about the risks that all life imposes-without consent...
...Brown, after all, was required to agree in writing that she would abort any fetus found to be defective, and no one has inquired as to what period of pregnancy or to what degree of defect such an agreement extended...
...Finally, the new techniques consume precious medical resources--scarce human Hills as well as money...
...If the new techniques can be assimilated to traditional human desires and medical aims, the assimilation also works in reverse...
...Scier~ze is the established church of our era, and every survey shows the public retaining great confidence in its powers...
...To be apprehensive is not merely to occupy some middle of the road, worrying aloud while doing nothing...
...Of these three responses, the first is simply too naive about "nature" or too negative toward human control...
...The promise they dangle before most women with blocked fallopian tubes but without wealth is a false one...
...Is the Encyclical really the primary cause of the decline in Roman Catholic practice in the U.S...
...The conception and development of new human life is already regulated or assured by contraception, fertility drugs, amniocentesis, artificial life-support systems and dramatic surgery for the prematurely born...
...DIRECT FROM ROME: Erasmus MacCrocodile 58~ VElC~E: Roy Scheele 552 THE SCREEN: ~ t lIKid Stuff: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...CORRESPONDENCE Hummmse VOt~ Hicksville, N.Y...
...As for the inevitable failures and abortigns, these too have their counterparts in nature: numerous zygotes fail to implant themselves and defective fetuses are often spontaneously rejected...
...The possibilities of moral and social mischief are multiplied...
...Calls for "public discussion" are not enough...
...CopyrfE~t (~ 1978 Cemm~tweal Pnb//sMng Co., Ioc.--US and Canada: $14 a Fear...
...It places risks on a yet-to-be-born person which demand a consent that obviously can never be given...
...Printed fa tln USA gad Fsblishad b/-wnak/y by CemmeaweofPub/s/deE Ca...
...It's that elusive "Faith"~in Christ, of course, and HIS choice of Peter the Rock...
...The apprehension response: The fact that there are precedents for "test-tube" conception is not reassuring...
...44106, SE~rhd8 Date Program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...NInN YOmr, N.Y...
...Does the insistent, ubiquitous propaganda of Planned Parenthood and Zero Population Growth play no part...
...Though one may hesitate to term the loss of a fertilized egg the size of this dot (.) an abortion, there is little reason to think that the manufacturing principles of quality control can halt there...
...I, 1924...
...Mary Jo Bane recently termed school a "massive intrusion" in the life of the child, but surely in the life of the family as well...
...Socamd e/ass po~ggo paid of New Yank, N.Y...
Vol. 105 • September 1978 • No. 17
