10
The Message -- for Catholics of Southwestern Indiana
Human clone would be
JP
image of man, not God, says
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A human clone would be
created in the image and likeness of man, not God, a
Vatican official said. Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice presi-
dent of the Pontifical Academy for Life and director of
the Bioethics Institute at Rome's Catholic University of
the Sacred Heart, told Vatican Radio
. human cloning would be "the most seri-
ous" violation of natural and divine laws ....
regarding procreation.
"In a formal way, it was already declared
seriously illicit in 1987" in a document on
the dignity of human procreation issued by
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Bishop
Sgreccia told the radio Jan. 8.
The bishop's comments came in the wake of grow-
ing media coverage of the announcement by a Chicago
scientist that he was prepared to attempt to clone a
human being.
The scientist, Richard Seed, has said he is assembling
a team of doctors to help him clone a human embryo
and implant it in a woman's womb. Four infertile cou-
ples have volunteered and have been selected for the
experiment, he said, but he still needs investors to help
him pay for the preparations and procedure.
Bishop Sgreccia said human cloning would be con-
trary to nature and to divine law because every person
has the right to be conceived and to be born within mar-
riage and from marriage. Cloning takes place "outside
the exercise of sexuality and is agamic, that is, without
the contribution of a man and a woman. It uses only
rying to clone a human being
would be "an affront to Almighty
the genes of one individual to make a photocopy of this
individual," he said.
Cloning, the bishop said, "represents a dominion by
man over man and includes a kind of desire to replace
God's plans in an arbitrary and complete way, creating
man in man's image and likeness."
Bishop Sgreccia said the condemnations by the
Catholic Church, other religions and ethicists is not
enough; "the law must intervene."
"The law must prohibit this instance of man's abuse
of man, this enslavement of the human
body of another person," he said.
President Bill Clinton already has
funding of human cloning
al bioethics commission has
gress pass legislation banning
To attempt cloning a hu
ous sin," said Franciscan Father
theologian who writes for
paper.
If Seed does try to clone a
would be "an
the laws on
God." FatherConcetti told
The Franciscan priest said
would be "an affront not only to nature
and good sense: Human cloning
even in cases in which a couple is
other possibility for overcoming 1
The fundamental problem, he said, "is
life would be reproduced in a
just any old instrument or chemical
that a human being is a person with
rimony, inviolable rights and the1
divinity."
Oregon foes of assisted suicide fear national group's
By ED LANGLOIS
Catholic News Service
PORTLAND, Ore. (CNS)
The move to Oregon of a promi-
nent group that supports a right
to die will boost physician-
assisted suicides, say" foes of the
practice.
Compassion in Dying, now
will enable depressed patients to
commit suicide instead of seek-
ing psychological counseling or
good pain management.
He cited cases in which the
Hemlock Society and renegade
pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian
engineered suicides for people
who had no terminal physical
illness.
etting up a consultative service to
help people in killing themselves is
misguided at best and dangerous at worst.
based in Seattle, will transfer its
headquarters to Oregon, where
voters in November affirmed the
nation's only law removing
penalties for doctors who help
patients die.
The organization also plans to
establish a statewide network of
suicide counselors by June 1.
Founded in 1993, the organiza-
tion has guided dozens of
patients toward hastened death,
even while Washington law for-
bids assisted suicide.
Compassion in Dying was a
major force in appealing Wash-
ington and New York's bans on
assisted suicide all the way to the
US. Supreme Court.
"They are trying to really
become entrenched as a group
here in Oregon/' said Dr. Bill Tof-
tier, president of the Physicians
for Compassionate Care and a
member of Holy Rosary Parish
in Portland.
"Unfortunately, their whole
paradigm of setting up a consul-
tative service to help people in
killing themselves is misguided
at best and dangerous at worst,"
he told the Catholic Sentinel,
newspaper of the Portland Arch-
diocese.
Toffler, who teaches and prac-
tices at Oregon Health Sciences
University, said the new network
Toffler contrasted the suicide
network to hospice programs
that offer pain control, counsel-
ing and spiritual support to
patients who are beyond cure.
"The people'Who enter hos-
pice'care feel desperate, too, but
almost no one commits suicide,"
he said.
Compassion in Dying's direc-
tor, Barbara Coombs Lee, helped
write Oregon's 1994 Death with
Dignity Act and spent much of
1997 defending the suicide law
against a repeal effort.
Oregon voters in November
affirmed their choice for doctor-
aided death by a margin of 60-40
percent.
She said the planned network
of counselors in Oregon "will
have a substantial impact on the
quality of decision making and
the choices available to family
and patients."
"Our intention," she added,
"is to make mental health pro-
fessionals and clergy available to
patients and theft families so that
they will feel fully supported."
Lee predicted that fewer, not
more, patients will choose sui-
cide because of the network.
The counselors, she said, will
tell patients about all their
options, including hospice and
better pain care. "We don't want
people to think they have only
one choice," said Lee.
Compassion in Dying is open-
ing its Oregon office with a
$50,000 grant from the Wallace
Alexander Gerbode Foundation
of San Francisco.
With the help of Salem oncol-
ogist Peter Rasmussen, Compas-
sion in Dying is at the same time
offering doctors new
guidelines for assist-
ing in suicide as well
as a recipe for lethal
d rugs, which doctors
are now allowed by
law to prescribe.
The 10-page docu-
ment will be given only to those
The relocation of Compassion
in Dying to Oregon "is another
symbol of acceptance, another bit
of encouragement to physicians,"
said Gayle Atteberry, executive
director of Oregon Right to Life.
"For those who want to partici-
pate, it will embolden them. It
will encourage those in the mid-
dle of the road."
She also predicted Compas-
sion in Dying will find loopholes
in the law and will be active in
making sure "there is a rosy face
on everything, helping to publi-
cize what they call good cases
and help squelch the bad ones."
Oregon, added Atteberr); will
be the org
ground before
move into o
Other groupS
gon's suicide law
Providence Health
PeaceHealth, both
health organizat
Northwest;
that is trying
control and
end of life.
The Oregon
tion has be
and
considering
for their patientS.
asked to promote ve
By MARK PATTISON
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON '(CNS) --
The organization People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals
has sent letters to each U.S.
Catholic bishop as well as
Protestant religious figures ask-
ing them to promote vegetari-
anism to their faithful.
The letters argue that God
commanded a vegetarian diet in
the book of Genesis, that Jesus
was a vegetarian, and that
Christ distributed no fish in the
Gospels' account of the miracle
of the loaves and fishes.
Bruce Friedrich, a Catholic
convert who is coordinator of
PETA's vegetarian campaign
and author of the letters, said he
was prompted by the U.S. bish-
ops' decision to study a return
to Friday abstinence from meat
as part of their pro-life efforts.
"Of course, fish is not a real
alternative. They're dead animals,
too," Friedrich told Catholic
News Service in a Jan. 7 tele-
phone interview from PETA
headquarters in Norfolk, Va.
In his
Friedrich said
for a vegetarian
Genesis 1:29. In the J
can Bible,
all over
that has seed-bearing
be your food."
The I:
God gives n,
the fish of the sea,
air, and all
by Frie&
ter that "t
dence that
a
But a New
interviewed by'
with Friedrich's
'Tve never
before," said
Joseph
of
ington.
something, but
This is so
I'm afraid
up the wrong
open communication and insists
that patients can change their
minds any time.
Along with a concoction of
barbiturate powder and pud-
ding, the protocol suggests anti-
nausea drugs and, a dose that
will keep the body's natural
defenses from fighting the poi-
son.
According to Compassion in
Dying, the recipe came out of
experiences with two dozen peo-
ple who took their own lives
with the help of the organization.
According to reports from
right-to-die groups, a handful of
patients have begun the process
to use the Oregon suicide law.
The law, first passed in 1994
by a slim margin, requires that
two doctors independently
decide that a patient who
wants suicide has six months
or less to live. If the doctors
guess that a patient is being
forced to commit suicide or is
suffering from depression, they
must intercede.
Foes of suicide, including
many Catholic groups, argue
that the law lacks safeguards
that will protect patients from
nefarious or coerced deaths.
doctors who. have a patient Bishops, religious leaders
requesting death. It encourages
