Difficulties in the moral assessment of embryo transfer and adoption include distinguishing it from illicit procedures like IVF and cryopreservation, determining the moral status of the human embryo, and reconciling embryo transfer and adoption with the procreative and unitive aspects of marriage. Many scholars who support embryo transfer and adoption limit their discussion to heterologous embryo transfer, the transfer of a genetically unrelated embryo into the uterus of a married woman. In this paper, the author focuses on homologous embryo transfer, the transfer of a genetically related embryo, as a viable option for married couples. It is the responsibility of the genetic mother to implant her embryos regardless of how they were created. When this option is not feasible, heterologous embryo transfer is possible in limited circumstances.

This essay challenges the relevance of the primary analogy in Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emanuel’s article “Physicians, Not Conscripts: Conscientious Objection in Health Care.” The author then proposes an alternative, classi­cally inspired model of conscience based on the work of E. Christian Brugger, Edmund Pellegrino, and Alasdair MacIntyre. This teleological model enables a more robust analysis of conscience claims than does Stahl and Emanuel’s social-constructivist framework.

This paper argues for two claims. First, recreational drug use is immoral because it undermines cognitive functioning. Second, for similar reasons, the state has a prima facie public policy interest in enacting legal restrictions on recreational drug use. In this context, “recreational drug use” refers to activities in which a person uses some intoxicating substance to impair, destroy, or otherwise frustrate the functioning of his cognitive faculties for the sake of pleasure or enjoyment.

This article briefly examines the topic of surrogacy in light of two opposing perspectives, mainstream feminism and Catholicism, which despite very different moral dimensions, arrive at the same conclusion. The author discusses the similarities between these two moral perspectives that are nor­mally considered to be opposed to each other.

The notion of a properly functioning human nature as a moral standard is a tenet of Western culture and is at the core Western humanism, Christian moral teaching, and natural law theory. Although these traditions recognize that the virtue of justice is exercised by giving one’s neighbor his due, they did not explore a person’s legitimate claims to goods in a modern theory of human rights. Enlightenment thinkers, as materialists and atheists, theorized that human rights are not related to God or human nature but are privileges granted by government. Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) developed theories of natural law and human rights. Maritain’s theory of human rights, employing a Thomistic methodology and founded on God and nature, is applicable to contemporary disputes, such as claims to a right to “same-sex” marriage.

In the United States, researchers are not legally required to compensate trial participants for research-related injuries. Nevertheless, institutional review boards (IRBs) ought to require that all research proposals include broad compensation plans. However, the standard justifications for mandatory compensation cannot reconcile the need for adequate participant protections with a duty on the part of the research community to provide them. This situation can be resolved only through a deeper analysis of research-related costs. Once mere costs are distinguished from moral costs, a compelling case can be made that the principle of respect for persons, or human dignity, provides a sound moral foundation for assigning responsibility for research-related injuries.

In discussions of end-of-life care and what the often-used but often-misunderstood buzzword “accompaniment” means, the core of the issue has often been missed, leading to inappropriate responses by physicians, loved ones, and the dying persons themselves. Emphasis is often placed on the care of circumstances rather than the care of persons. In what follows, these issues are systematically addressed to show that when patients face physical death, a truly ethical response is authentic, loving accompaniment of them. This form of such accompaniment is explored.

Current clinical guidelines for the treatment of individuals who experience gender dysphoria include the administration of testosterone to women who desire to appear as men and estrogen to men who desire to appear as women. Despite the rapid and widespread adoption of this practice, strikingly little scientific evidence supports this treatment approach as a safe and effective medical intervention to prevent associated depression and suicide. Although low-quality, short-term studies have demonstrated a reduction of dysphoria, emerging evidence reveals significant bodily harm from this practice and a lack of long-term benefit in preventing depression and suicide. From an ethical perspective, this practice distorts a proper view of human nature and violates bodily integrity by directly inducing sterility. The use of exogenous cross-sex hormones reinforces rather than alleviates underlying psychiatric dysfunction while significantly increasing the risk of other medical morbidities. Despite the valid goal of alleviating suffering, this practice cannot be justified by the use of the principles of totality or double effect.

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 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.

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 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.