The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council recognized that the doctrine of the Incarnation is specifically concerned with the coming of Christ to free mankind from bondage to both original and personal sin. Original justice and original sin also can be examined through the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. By considering these concepts through the original moment of Mary’s conception, we gain a better understanding of the moment that each person is conceived. Thus a proper understanding of the Immaculate Conception will help us develop a better definition of human conception.

In the sphere of end-of-life care, the fear of being a burden on loved ones is a significant factor in patients seeking assisted suicide or euthanasia. The claims of altruism and love that support such decisions are misplaced, and the possibility of being a burden must be reimaged within a proper anthropology. Allowing oneself to be a burden is a significant aspect not only of loving human relationships, but of a human nature that is essentially dependent and created in the image of God.

According to David Benatar’s asymmetry argument, the transition from nonexistence to existence is always a harm, and procreation always a pro tanto wrong. This argument fails to reach its anti-natalist conclusion if we maintain the view that there is no temporal relationship between our worldly lives and our afterlives. On this view, since anyone who will be freely procreated has an existence in the afterlife that is atemporal with respect to worldly time, procreators do not move those they procreate from nonexistence to existence and so do not harm them. This view provides a reason to reject Benatar’s stringent “life worth starting” criterion for procreation.

In their article “Debate Ethics of Embryo Models from Stem Cells,” Nicolas Rivron and colleagues call for a debate on stem cell–derived human embryo models. They first ask four questions regarding ethics and embryo models, and then give four recommendations to investigators and regulators. Understanding the nature of embryo models is crucial to determining their treatment. If they are human organisms, they should be protected by existing guidelines for ethical research. For instance, the good—which for humans includes organismal flourishing—precludes experimentation on embryonic humans. However, investigators do not know with certainty whether embryo models are equivalent to embryos. Therefore, investigators must halt experiments, evaluate data, and engage in debate before continuing with research.

An unquestionably important biological question is whether human beings are the product of chance or of purpose in the evolutionary process. Charles Darwin did not accept purpose in biological evolution, a view not shared by his colleague Alfred Russel Wallace. The controversy has remained ever since, and while many experts argue against purpose in biological evolution, many others defend it. This paper reflects on this biological and ethical problem, relating it to the possible existence of a plan that governs and shapes the evolution of living beings and that is ultimately responsible for the development of Homo sapiens.

Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) is an increasingly popular method by which patients are choosing to hasten death when life feels unbearable. This formal act of suicide often leads to distressing symptoms, for which patients then seek palliation by medical professionals. The intentional act of hastening death is always an evil act. A Catholic physician must understand the moral implications of participating in any phase of the patient’s planning and execution of the VSED process, including cooperation in evil and scandal. The Catholic physician must strive to develop a well-formed conscience and then be prepared to exercise his or her right to conscientious objection while offering an example of true compassion for the sick, the suffering, and the dying.

Despite great interest in the field of gene editing, sparked by the advent of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated applications, the personhood of tripronuclear zygotes has not been addressed appropriately. 3PN zygotes are discarded as medical waste, and their use as models for human genome editing is becoming increasing common. 3PN zygotes possess an extra set of chromosomes, which often leads to severe genetic abnormalities; they are dismissed as “nonviable embryos” and treated as an ethically acceptable alternative to human embryonic research. However, given the development cycle of 3PN zygotes and the qualifications for human personhood assessed, there is compelling evidence that 3PN zygotes are indeed human persons. Although genetically disadvantaged, they deserve the same respect as do genetically normal human zygotes.