Pass the Patients First Act

Richard A. Sokerka

In 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that allowed for federally-funded research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using embryonic stem cells.

Catholic teaching respects the dignity and the equal moral worth of every human person. This view has consistently rejected research that destroys the life of some in order enhance the life of others. The Church affirms the position of modern embryology that the human embryo is a living, complete, whole, integrated, self-directing member of the human species who will, if given the proper environment, move itself along a trajectory of development to the next mature stage.

Because of this position, the Catholic Church opposes research involving human embryonic stem cells, which require the destruction of the human embryo during their isolation. In contrast, the Church has championed adult stem cell research, which does not involve human embryonic stem cells.

To right the Obama administration’s wrong, eight Republican senators have introduced legislation, the Patients First Act, to stop federally-funded research at the NIH using embryonic stem cells, and instead promote stem cell research not involving the destruction or damage of human embryos.

According to Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the sponsor of the legislation, the Patients First Act, “would encourage the use of adult stem cells for medical purposes,” an “ethical and effective alternative to embryonic stem cell research.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., a co-sponsor of the bill, stated, “Medical breakthroughs achieved via stem cell research need not come at the expense of innocent life.”

The 2008 Vatican document. “Dignitatis Personae,” states that “the obtaining of stem cells from a living human embryo…invariably causes the death of the embryo and is consequently gravely illicit.”

“Irrespective of efficacious therapeutic results,” the document states, such research “advances through the suppression of human lives that are equal in dignity to the lives of other human individuals and to the lives of the researchers themselves. History itself has condemned such a science in the past and will condemn it in the future, not only because it lacks the light of God but also because it lacks humanity.”

This legislation will protect the sanctity of life, period. No more needs to be said than for it to be passed into law as quickly as humanly possible.