A sermon on bioethics
Dad: Bioethics requires humility and realism
Vatican Radio With regard to the protection of life, science should by no means prevail over man: with such an admonition, Pope Francis addressed the Italian Bioethics Committee at an audience on January 28.
Audience with the Italian Bioethics Committee – OSS_ROM
The Pope stressed that it is unacceptable to consider human embryos as a material that can be rejected, and biotechnologies cannot be inspired by commercial purposes.
A person is an end, not a means, and the Italian Bioethics Committee is called upon to promote "the search for truth and goodness in complex human and ethical issues," the Pope said and reminded that the Church is extremely attentive to bioethics issues, but one should not think that this is its privilege: on this basis, the church and civil society They are called upon to cooperate in accordance with their own areas of competence.
The Italian Bioethics Committee aims to consider a person in his integrity, protecting his health from the moment of conception to the natural end and considering each person as an individual. This principle underlies the approach to biotechnologies: it is unacceptable to use them in cases where they harm human dignity and when they pursue only industrial and commercial purposes.
Bioethics, the Holy Father said, was born in order to develop a critical approach to biomedical technologies that threaten human dignity, having only utility and benefit as a criterion. The Pope noted that it is not always easy to come to harmonious conclusions on certain issues of bioethics, therefore this area requires "humility, realism and fearless comparison with various positions, so that the testimony of truth contributes to the growth of civic consciousness."
The Holy Father asked the representatives of the committee to pay attention to such an issue as the causes of environmental degradation.
Then the Pope focused on the topic of disability and rejection of vulnerable people in a society where competitiveness and accelerated progress are brought to the fore. The Pope pointed to the task of "confronting the culture of garbage, which has many manifestations, and among them the attitude to embryos as material that can be rejected, as well as to sick and elderly people approaching death."
The Pope called on bioethicists to "make more and more efforts for international debates in view of the possible harmonization of rules in the field of biology and medicine, so that through these rules fundamental values and rights are recognized."
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29.01.2015