Vatican official against the Nobel Prize in IVF: conflict or debate?

By Bob McDonald, host of the CBC radio program scienceQuirks & quarks an official from the Vatican has stated that this year's award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine to the British professor Robert Edwards for a world leader in in vitro fertilization or IVF treatment "completely out of line."  Is this another case of the Church in violation of the science, or an opportunity for an open discussion about how science should? Prof. Edwards introduced the world to the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, who its 30th anniversary in 2008. Since then, IVF has provided a way for millions of infertile couples around the world have IVF children. However, is not a perfect process.  It takes many embryos for success is achieved, thus denying that many will be deleted. And that's where the Vatican has a problem. According to the teaching of the Church, all embryos be considered as human beings. Mgr. Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for life, said in a statement that prof. Edwards ' the wrong door "opened in research. According to the Vatican documents, IVF goes against their beliefs about the dignity of the Church argument determines on scientific behavior is different from the famous process of Galileo on his claim that the earth around the Sun.  In this case, the Church had the wrong facts.  In this case, the Church is not the argument against the accuracy of the science, it's a moral boundaries around scientific pursuits. It is against the storage and transport, the freezing of embryos for other purposes. This position reaches far beyond IVF in other areas of science, specifically the same stem cell research. Those embryos that have been removed by the fertility clinics by researchers to be seen as a source of stem cells.  They see great promise in stem cells for the treatment of many types of diseases for which there is no current treatment, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and heart disease. Stem cells can be converted into any type of cell in the body, so the idea is to make a healthy new nerve cells, blood cells, new body tissue, and maybe one day even new bodies. But embryonic stem cell research is embroiled in controversy, especially in the United States, where a fierce debate for religious, ethical, political and legal furious over the use of embryonic stem cells. This has financial and scientific effort to work on other sources of adult stem cells tissues.  Many researchers believe, however, that the use of adult stem cells greater technical challenges and much less features than the embryonic stem cells.  In Canada, because of the concern, the guidelines for embryonic stem cell research but have been constantly on the move slowly, and are very restrictive. In vitro fertilization of the Vatican against will probably not change the practice, because it's been so long and so many infertile couples children. But the broader issue of scientific research limited by religious concerns should be discussed as we are to continue. Where do we draw the line between science that has a huge potential, on the one hand, but part of the society on the other hand, an insult?

View the original article here