OTTAWA, Feb 22, 2001 (LSN.ca) – A document on Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation released Feb 20 by the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) and the Catholic Health Association of Canada (CHAC) states unequivocally that research with embryonic stem cells is illicit as far as the church is concerned. “Notwithstanding the great potential for good, the retrieval of [embryonic stem] cells is morally unacceptable because it results in the death of the embryo,” the document reads. “Catholic teaching holds that the embryo is a human being and must be treated as a person. How can we create life and then destroy it? A human person, including the embryo, must never be used as a means to an end.” Such moral clarification is necessary in light of the ongoing conflict in research circles over the use of embryonic stem cells to find solutions to ailments such as Parkinson’s.
The document also affirms that the “Church is strongly in favour of organ and tissue donation and transplantation.” It stipulates that “Vital organs that occur singly in the body (e.g., the heart) can be removed only after death.” Produced as a leaflet, “Giving Something of Ourselves,” says, “the donor’s consent must have been well informed and freely given in advance, in writing or in discussion. In the absence of this consent, the consent of the family or proxy is needed.” Moreover, “there must be moral certainty that the donor is dead.”
Going further, in a quote attributed to Pope John Paul II, the document reads: “the criterion adopted in more recent times for ascertaining the fact of death, namely the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity, if rigorously applied, does not seem to conflict with the essential elements of a sound anthropology. Therefore, a health-worker professionally responsible for ascertaining death can use these criteria in each individual case as the basis for arriving at that degree of assurance in ethical judgment which moral teaching describes as ‘moral certainty’. (Pope John Paul II. “Cloning, involving use and destruction of human embryos is morally unacceptable.” L’Osservatore Romano no. 35 (1657) 30 August 2000: p. 1.)
The whole document is available on line at: https://www.cccb.ca/docs/giving_text.htm