Vatican Counsels Animal Experiments Be Done Before Experiments on Humans

VATICAN, March 8, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With some researchers turning away from experimentation on animals out of political correctness, while at the same time engaging in research involving human embryos, a Vatican statement backing animal experimentation is sure to ruffle some feathers.  The Pontifical Academy For Life has released a concluding communiqué on their Feb 24-26 meeting on the “Ethics Of Biomedical Research. For A Christian Vision”  The document speaks of the need to “fully respect every person’s inalienable dignity as a person, his right to life and his substantial physical integrity.” In a proposed ethical commitment for researchers in the field, researchers are asked to recognize, because of their “duty to safeguard human life and health, the usefulness and the obligation of a serious and responsible experimentation on animals, carried out according to determined ethical guidelines, before applying new diagnostic and therapeutic methodologies to human beings.”  Only when experiments are shown to be harmless or with acceptable degree of harm to animals, are they to be permitted on human beings.  Thus the Vatican points out that the human embryo, increasingly used today as research fodder, is in fact a human being, worth more than animals and worthy of the same dignity due all children of God.  Another highlight of the Pontifical Academy’s document notes that “there are no ethical limits to the knowledge of the truth, that is, there are no ‘barriers’ beyond which the human person is forbidden to apply his cognitive energy.”  However, the dignity of the human person demands, “precise ethical limits are set out for the manner the human being in search of the truth should act, since ‘what is technically possible is not for that very reason morally admissible’”.  See the full document of the Pontifical Academy at:  https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdlife/documents/rc_pont-acd_life_doc_20030226_ix-gen-assembly-final_en.html