[1]Does
the right to health exist at any cost?
Prof. Gary Devery – Sydney – 27 September
2006
Contrary to popular
understanding the mere assertion of a claim is insufficient to establish it as
a right. Instead, having a ‘right’ means having a justified claim upon others to refrain from interfering with, or to
deliver that which is justly owed in order to fulfill basic, objective
constituents of human wellbeing.
Human rights correspond
to the demands of human dignity and entail, in the first place, the fulfillment
of the essential needs of the person in the material and spiritual spheres.
Forming a single whole, they are “…directed unambiguously towards the promotion
of every aspect of the good of both the person and society,“[2]
finding their source, their sustenance and their inviolability in the natural
law which grants or enjoins them.[3]
By this account, it makes more sense to talk about a right to a basic and
common level of ‘health care’ rather than a right to ‘health’.
If saving or improving
lives is the goal of medical research, does that justify doing anything and
everything? Are there to be any ethical limits? For some people
the idea of placing limits on scientific research can sound like blasphemy. But
every area of human endeavour, including biomedical science, needs ethical
restraints. Even if research could open
possibilities for the future, we must say ‘no’ when the dignity of human life
is at stake.
Human life is always a good and human beings are
to be valued precisely because of the kind of entities they are. All human
beings are equal in dignity and this dignity is intrinsic and does not depend
on any accidental characteristics such as maturity or presently exercised
capacities.
Respect for the dignity of every human being
gives rise to the recognition of the so-called ‘sanctity’ or ‘inviolability’ of
human life and a series of human rights. While respecting human life and rights
is a duty of every individual—including research scientists—protecting human
life and rights is especially a duty of the state and an irreplaceable
condition for ensuring the common good of all.
Science confirms that human
embryos are complete, though immature, human beings. Ethics requires that all human beings be treated with respect for
their human dignity and that their basic human rights be observed. Sound research ethics therefore concludes that
the destruction of human embryos for experimental, commercial or therapeutic
uses is gravely unethical. As the World Medical Association’s Declaration of
Helsinki (2000) points out: “in medical research on human subjects,
considerations related to the well-being of the human subject should take
precedence over the interest of science and society.”[4]
Belief in the dignity of
the human embryo means that we reject any argument long the lines of the good
end of embryo research (potential cures) ever justifying the means (the killing
of embryos). The Church and many others beside have been remorseless in
insisting that no hoped-for therapeutic good is sufficient to justify the
immorality of killing our very young. Destructive embryo research is
inherently unjust: it is inherently wrong.
Embryo research is itself not without huge ethical and
social cost. Killing – killing embryos
- harms not only the victim, but the perpetrator, the profession and the
society complicit in it.
[1] These points were prepared by Dr Brigid Vout (MBBS M Bioeth) Executive Officer Life Office, Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia
[2] Compendium, n.154, citing John Paul II, Message for the 1999
World Day of Peace, 3.
[3] John XXIII,
Pacem in Terris, nn. 289-9.
[4] World
Medical Assocation, Declaration of
Helsinki Ethical Principles for Medical
Research Involving Human Subjects, 52nd WMA General Assembly, Edinburgh, Scotland,
October 2000 A.5