The document is addressed “to the Catholic faithful and to all who seek the truth”. It’s always a good sign when someone who is seeking the truth clearly reveals not knowing what to do with some of the evidence. The attack or I should say instructive is authored by a group of senior un-married white priests that seem to be trying to tell women what God intends for their body and how families should plan for themselves. They say that “cryopreservation of oocytes for the purpose of being used in artificial procreation is to be considered morally unacceptable”. What about cryopreservation of sperm? And/or gender selection using male sperm? Is that acceptable?

The only thing that can’t be done is to ignore this type of medical science because it will change things, it will push the human race forward. 

I also agree with the document when they say that “life will triumph”, and in our case it did!

The document says: “The embryonic human body develops progressively according to a well-defined program with its proper finality, as is apparent in the birth of every baby”. In our case the embryonic cells had a well-defined genetic mutation inside a gene known as NEMO that causes the immune system to fail; a terminal condition, not compatible with life. It took us 580 days to find out exactly what was wrong with Andy thanks to the brilliant minds of medical researchers that know how much Andy was suffering.

It says: “The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person”. I agree that human embryonic cells are worthy of esteem and respect and shall be handled with dignity and even more than all of the other type of cells inside this planet. I don’t believe that human embryonic cells are like a person, if they are, why haven’t I seen any microscopes inside a church? Consider this analogy: If a building is burning down and twelve small children are inside screaming for help. The building also contains a freezer storing a dozen or so frozen embryos. Which do you save first?

Then it says: .. “the unconditional respect owed to every human being at every moment of his or her existence”. That’s exactly why we had to do everything we could to save Andy’s life.

 

“That there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of frozen embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons”. The morally licit solution is to swap healthy cells for damaged ones to restore health and life and to cure incurable terminal diseases and chronic diseases that affect millions of people.

The document says, “it is never permitted to do something which is intrinsically illicit, not even in view of a good result: the end does not justify the means”. It would be interesting for me to ask face to face, the authors of the Dignitas Personae instructive, if they ever had a serious infection. I would ask them to describe how it felt. Did it hurt, was it uncomfortable? Then I would ask them to multiply those feelings by 1,000 times which is the number of days that Andy had to be in the hospital in a constant battle against life threatening infections. I would also be interesting to read their medical records and ask them if receiving vaccines is considered unethical… the end does not justify the means? Or if any of them ever needed a blood transfusion. Is that unethical because they are cells from another human? Or if taking antibiotics is illicit because as the name implies from the Gree
k αντί – anti, “against” + βιοτικός – biotikos, “fit for life”. Taking antibiotics is illicit?

The document says “that the originality of every person is a consequence of the particular relationship that exists between God and a human being from the first moment of his existence and carries with it the obligation to respect the singularity and integrity of each person, even on the biological and genetic levels”. So does this mean I had to abandon efforts to save Andy’s life because he had this particular relationship with God that was not compatible with life? God wanted him to suffer? I wonder how many times have the authors of the document gone to the doctor this year. Why to they go? God wanted them to be sick?

They fail to give a “morally licit solution to the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of frozen embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons”. The morally licit solution is to move forward with stem cell research and to unleash their healing powers.

They make the strongest argument with preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) saying that it “is directed toward the qualitative selection and consequent destruction of embryos, which consitutues an act of abortion”. I disagree with the argument because abortion is the premature termination of pregnancy and PGD does not involve pregnancy. Then it says that PGD “is therefore the expression of a eugenic mentality that ‘accepts selective abortion in order to prevent the birth of children affected by various types of anomalies. Such an attitude is shameful and utterly reprehensible, since it presumes to measure the value of a human life only within the parameters of ‘normality’ and physical well-being, thus opening the way to legitimizing infanticide and euthanasia as well'”. The word eugenic is normally referred as pertaining to or causing improvement in the offspring produced. This has to do with disease and disability and nothing else. And I agree that PGD should only be used for life and death situations and not to select particular physical qualities. I think that in our case love was the answer and with Sofia we learned that we can love even more. The only shame I find is that medical science still doesn’t know how to adequately treat diseases like NEMO. One out of four of our baby boys would carry the same mutation. Leaving all of the other variables constant: Who would pay the bill of the medical expenses of another boy with NEMO? One thousand days of hospitalization at at least $2.5 k average per day?