Word: moralisms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Louise Brown, history's first "test-tube baby," could not have been born in the U.S. Since August 1975 the Federal Government has banned new grants for research on in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and without the money experimentation has virtually ceased. The ban was ordered because of deep moral qualms about scientific tampering with human reproduction. Besides that, IVF involves the moral status of the human embryo, a matter linked to the religiously anguishing abortion debate...
...situation is about to change. The Ethics Advisory Board of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has just given IVF a moral go-ahead and urged HEW to lift the ban. While doing so, it nevertheless recommended research limitations that may influence future policy with regard to such matters as selective human breeding...
...board's decision was reached only after hearings in eleven cities, where testimony was taken on the moral issues from 197 witnesses-ordinary citizens as well as noted scientists and clergymen. The most negative expert, Protestant Moral Theologian Paul Ramsey, saw an "irremovable possibility" that physical or psychological damage might be inflicted on IVF children. A number of scientists, though not against IVF, felt that more research with nonhuman embryos was necessary. So far only a handful of IVF studies has been done with higher primates...
Father Richard McCormick, a Georgetown University moral theologian and the only clergyman on the panel, broke with Catholic tradition on both points. The moral claims of the individual embryo, he believes, are open to doubt before implantation, and Pius' arguments are "no longer decisive." McCormick has strong reservations about the wisdom of public funding, however...
Thus Bukovsky exploited the rivalries and hidden disputes among the KGB, prison administrations, schools of psychiatry and political commissars. Legal affronteries never won him liberty but a different form of freedom: the ability to choose jail over silence. His life as a moral goad was organized around the harsh facts of imprisonment. "Every time I was released," he writes, "my only thought was how to get as much done as possible, so that afterward, back in prison again. I wouldn't have to spend sleepless nights dwelling on lost opportunities...