Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 8 — The Georgia Bulletin, September 15, 1988
Executive Order Targets
Fetal Tissue Experiments
PEACE GIFT — Maureen King right, and her daughter, Michalyn,
admire handmade items they were taking to the Soviet Union as part of
a peace trip coordinated by Mothers Embracing Nuclear Disarma
ment. (NC photo by Maureen Nuesca)
Pope John Paul:
Reject Euthanasia
BY JULIE ASHER
WASHINGTON (NC) -
Aides in the Reagan ad
ministration have drafted
an executive order that
would ban the use of tissue
from deliberately aborted
fetuses in all federally
financed experiments and
medical treatments.
Copies of a Sept. 2 letter
on the proposed ban from
Gary L. Bauer, assistant to
President Reagan on policy
development, were leaked
to the press Sept. 8.
According to press
reports, Bauer wrote to
Health and Human Ser
vices Secretary Otis R.
Bowen saying the ad
ministration wanted to
issue the directive “as soon
as possible” and asking
Bowen to review it by Sept.
9.
The proposal was
prepared prior to a
meeting scheduled for
Sept. 14-16 of a 21-member
federal advisory panel
charged with examining
the matter.
The draft order would
make it federal policy
“that an unborn or
newborn child who has died
as a result of an induced
abortion shall not be used
for purposes of research or
transplantation.”
Bauer in the letter said a
ban would “protect unborn
and newborn children from
experimentation, research
and organ transplantation,
except in cases where the
unborn or newborn child
would itself directly
benefit.”
The proposal seems to in
dicate private institutions
conducting fetal research
would not be eligible for
federal funds of any kind.
More than half of all
research money used at
medical schools is federal
money.
The advisory panel, set
up in March, was to meet
for three days at the Na
tional Institutes of Health
in Bethesda, Md., to exam
ine the scientific, legal and
ethical issues surround
ing the use in research of
fetal tissue obtained from
induced abortions.
Four professors from
Catholic-run universities
were appointed to the com
mittee, the Human Fetal
Tissue Transplantation
Research Panel, in late
August.
Researchers have been
using fetal organs and tis
sues to seek cures for ill-
nessess such as Parkin
son’s disease, diabetes and
some blood disorders.
Abortion opponents ob
ject to the use of deliberate
ly aborted fetuses in such
research, some of them
characterizing it as “can
nibalism.” They have also
expressed concern that the
researchers need for the
fetal tissues soon after the
abortions could promote
collaboration between the
researchers and doctors
performing abortions.
Douglas Johnson, legisla
tive director of the Nation
al Right to Life Committee,
Sept. 9 strongly endorsed
the proposed ban.
“The proposed order
would ban the use of living
unborn children as guinea
pigs for harmful ex
periments, while permit
ting research intended to
benefit a fetus,” he said.
“Some researchers have
no qualms about injuring
unborn babies if they are
going to be aborted, but we
believe these babies are
members of the human
family and should be
treated as such.”
The Catholic Church op
poses research on deliber
ately aborted fetuses. It
does not oppose research
on fetuses from miscar
riages or still births, but
researchers say it is almost
never possible to use such a
fetus because tissues die so
quickly.
Some critics of the
Reagan administration
said the timing of the pro
posed ban pre-empted any
report the advisory panel
might have drafted Sept.
16.
The federal advisory
panel was appointed after
the NIH requested govern
ment permission to im
plant fetal tissue into pa
tients with Parkinson’s
disease, a degenerative
disease.
The Department of
Health and Human Ser
vices last spring withheld
approval of the research,
saying that such ex
periments raise “a number
of questions — primarily
ethical and legal — that
have not been satisfactori
ly addressed.”
The panel’s chairman for
ethical and legal issues is
LeRoy Walters, director of
the Center for Bioethics at
Jesuit-run Georgetown
University’s Kennedy In
stitute of Ethics.
Holy Cross Father James
T. Burtchaell, professor of
theology at the University
of Notre Dame in Indiana,
is another member of the
committee. He is the
author of “Rachel Weep
ing, and Other Essays on
Abortion,” and a member
of a Notre Dame faculty
committee which reviews
research involving human
subjects.
The advisory panel also
includes two other faculty
members from George
town University.
TRADING STAMPS (S&H Green. Top
Value, Blue Chip, Plaid. Gold Bond.
Red Holden. Big Bonus. Eagle. Quality,
Family Discount. Big Dollar. LMC &
BW coupons. Gold Strike and Shur-
Value) can help provide for the educa
tion of a needy Sioux Indian child.
Please send yours to: St. Joseph's In
dian School, Box 02F8. Chamberlain.
SD 57326
CASTEL GANDOLFO,
Italy (NC) — Because “suf
fering and pain remain an
inevitable part of the
earthly experience,” medi
cal personnel should reject
“the pleas of those who
clamor for the so-called
compassionate solution of
euthanasia,” said Pope
John Paul II.
“No doctor, no nurse, no
medical technician, indeed
no human being, is the final
arbiter of human life,
either of one’s own life or
that of another,” he said.
The pope spoke in
English the evening of
Sept. 8 at his summer villa
at Castel Gandolfo to par
ticipants attending a Euro
pean Congress of Anesthe
tists held in Rome, 15 miles
from the papal villa.
Anesthesiology is con
cerned with medical means
of easing pain and suffer
ing caused by injuries and
illness or by medical opera
tions.
“Some of our contem
poraries are advocating
the termination of human
life through euthanasia as
a supposedly compassion
ate solution to the problem
of human suffering,” the
pope said.
But euthanasia is an “act
of killing, which will
always be in itself
something to be rejected,”
the pope added.
It must also be rejected
when patients make the re
quest, he said.
“The pleas of gravely ill
people who sometimes ask
for death are not to be
understood as implying a
true desire for euthanasia;
in fact it is almost always a
case of an anguished plea
for help and for love,” he
"Right To
Solution"
said.
“While being sym
pathetic to the subjective
feelings which may prompt
these pleas for euthanasia,
you must not lose sight of
the objective facts and
ultimate truths which
necessarily enter into the
question,” the pope said.
Anesthetists must main
tain “high moral standards
and courageous ethical
conduct” when faced with
the option of euthanasia “in
instances of intense and
prolonged suffering,” he
said.
D » ii
ie —
NHR
NICK HOMK REPAIR <
Plaster. Stucco. Painting
Remodeling A Room Additions
NICK
Rock General Contractor
Brick 18 yrt axpanance
Block* BEEPER HOME
T 'l« 360-9050 934-6624
CLEANING
j-the-motter-pkimbec-j
CONNECTION
$ 20 00 OFF
(Specializing)
For first-time customers
apartments
business offices
’ „f pa L rs
residential
9r\1 IK • Plumbing
11 ll • Shower Pans
Free Estimates
Replaced
956-0377
971-8162
Limerick Junction Irish Pub
Virginia-Highlands
one and only
Irish Pub
Live Music & Good Times Enjoy Outside Platform Deck
—No Cover Charge-
822 N. Highland Ave. 874-7147
your, Mndtpeodtnf ]
^ Insurance / *qenrr A
MMVU YOu rwt
/in
/utter and fTlcLellan
Insurance
7ll Lenox Towers, 3400 Peachtree Road, N. E.
Atlanta, Georgia 30326 (404> 261-7212
"The only insurance people you 'll ecer need '
(Continued from page 1)
removed from any that should justify forcing physicians to
starve her to death or to bring about her death through
dehydration.”
The medical college said there could be circumstances
when providing food and water can be withheld or discon
tinued at the patient’s behest because of his or her physical
condition, “coupled with the burden of the means,” but not
in Mrs. O’Connor’s case.
It added there was no evidence Mrs. O’Connor “ex
pressed a decision to refuse the basic hydration and nutri
tional support.”
Mary Spaulding, a lawyer involved in the case, said Mrs.
O’Connor is conscious, knows her name and can even say
how she feels.
“This case is the next plateau for the people in the right-
to-die movement,” she said, adding that Mrs. O’Connor
does not fit into circumstances courts have considered in
previous cases to terminate food and water to patients.
Two years ago Massachusetts’ highest court ruled that a
feeding tube could be disconnected from firefighter Paul
Brophy, who was in a “persistent vegetative state.”
Those involved in the case said it was the first time such a
ruling involved the question of withholding food and water
from a person still living without elaborate life-support
systems. Brophy died eight days after the feeding tube was
removed.
Traditional church teaching holds that no one may take a
life or withhold ordinary treatment but that extraordinary
means are not required to prolong life in cases where death
is imminent.
Some theologians have argued whether procedures such
as tubal feeding that must be arranged by physicians can
truly be called “ordinary,” but others consider such
devices within the bounds of normal care.
Msgr. William Smith, professor of moral theology at St.
Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, N.Y., said that if the
court orders the hospital to remove the intravenous tube,
Mrs. O’Connor “will die of starvation. It will be a court-
ordered death.”