The diocese of Sioux Falls discusses the issue of stem cells and cloning this month when it hosts Father Tad Pacholczyk, Ph.D., the director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.
Father Pacholczyk says the topic is drawing an increasing amount of interest from all Americans.
“There’s a lot of interest,” said Father Pacholczyk, “and there’s a lot of still basic confusion around the issues.”
Father Pacholczyk says many people find the science to be one step out of their league. People hear a lot about it from the news media but are not sure what they should think.
Father Pacholczyk aims to try and simplify the issues and place them into laymen’s terms, to help people understand the issues and what’s at stake with them.
Father Pacholczyk will discuss “The Science and Ethics of Stem Cells and Cloning” on Thursday, June 16 at 7 p.m. at the Orthopedic Institute (810, East 23rd Street, Sioux Falls).
Father Pacholczyk says many of the audiences he addresses share with him a “wariness and queasiness” around the issues.
“I end up providing first the scientific overview and then offer an explanation of the rationale for why the Church believes what it believes and what the real moral goods are that are at stake here,” he said.
Father Pacholczyk pointed out that the stem cell/cloning debate is something different compared to earlier Church/science debates.
“This is not so much about science versus faith,” he said. “Those debates happened in the past where there was failure to recognize the boundaries of each discipline.”
In those other earlier cases, there were some religious people who were trying to talk science and make statements about science from their religious vantage point. “There were also some scientists who were trying to make statements about things religious,” Father Pacholczyk said.
This is a different debate, it is not science against faith in this case. “There is good science that the Church will vigorously encourage with respect to stem cell research,” Father Pacholczyk said.
He pointed to the adult stem cell arena as a place considered “fair game” from start to finish among others.
“There are many sources of stem cells that the Church has no problem with,” said Father Pacholczyk. “This is not an issue of the Church being opposed to science or being opposed to cures or to healing.”
Father Pacholczyk pointed to the Church’s involvement in the world’s network of Catholic Hospitals as proof the Church is not opposed to research or progress.
“It’s rather a question of using the right means to go after that healing,” he said.
Father Pacholczyk believes more needs to be done to broaden familiarity with some of the basic bioethical questions facing society today.
“Many people view these questions as a little bit esoteric, a little bit off in the future, not pertaining to me and something that I don’t have to focus on,” he said.
Father Pacholczyk points to invitro fertilization as an earlier example of the same thought process that has created a huge moral dilemma for our society of close to 400,000 frozen human embryos in the United States alone.
He asserts the same thing is looming on the horizon for cloning and stem cell research. “If there is not enough of a public awareness and a public discussion about this, it will simply slip into the standard operating procedure that takes place in our clinics, our hospitals and our research centers and that would be a tremendous shame and bring great damage to our society in the future,” he said.