Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Test-tube babies

Dr Robert Edwards is the pioneer who first developed in vitro fertilisation. This morning it is announced that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize. Then, also this morning, as it were by reflex, Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, a high official in the Vatican, announces that it’s not all good. Never mind that millions of otherwise childless couples have been enabled to conceive and bear children they love and care for. According to Ignacio, IVF has also resulted in discarded eggs. And that’s bad.

Well, I personally think that if our good God is worried about the eggs, which I doubt, he/she is perfectly capable of taking care of them. That’s all far outside my comprehension and jurisdiction. What I do know is that IVF has done much good, generated much happiness, made the world a much better place. Dr Edwards’s award was somewhat delayed, but richly deserved.

And yet again the church, right on cue, chooses death rather than life, gloom rather than light.