Benedict Ashley

1
Benedict Ashley Kevin ORourke

• Dominican Contributions to
• Bioethics in the USA

2
(No Transcript)
3
Students

• Benedict Ashley
• Theology of the body bioethics
• Protestant-Humanist-Marxist-Catholic-OP
• PhDs Notre Dame Aquinas Institute

• Kevin ORourke
• Clinical medicine
• Catholic Health Association Director
  Medical-Moral affairs
• PhD Angelicum, Dean Aquinas Institute

4
(No Transcript)
5
Beginnings of Bioethics

• Overlap medicine / biological research / law /
  pubic policy / new technology
• in light of RC moral teaching
• ORourke - Centre for Health Care Ethics, St
  Louis Medical School (1979)
• Ashley with Albert Moraczewski OP, National
  Bioethics Centre (1972, 2004)

6
(No Transcript)
7

• when the Centre started, the issues were rather
  routine and did not require a great deal of
  scientific knowledge. Thus, we spent much of our
  time on questions of informed consent, removing
  life support, observing confidentiality, and
  proper spiritual care of dying people. Soon
  after, such problems as brain death and organ
  donation, amniocentesis, in vitro fertilisation,
  surrogate motherhood, and physician-assisted
  suicide came on the scene. Recently, of course,
  the issues of cloning and the various
  possibilities associated with the Human Genome
  Project and genetic intervention have become
  prominent. Finally the harvesting of stem cells
  obtained from aborted foetuses and fusing them
  with the cells of a cow is now a reality.

8
(No Transcript)
9
Ethical Manuals

• Need for a Catholic, Christian/ecumenical
  guidebook for medical practitioners
• Continual revision for new ethical dilemmas
• Conceptual framework for a clinical setting
• Theological content scripture magisterium
• Personalist Philosophy

10
(No Transcript)
11
Interpreting Aquinas

• Natural law theory human goals biological,
  psychological, social, spiritual
• St Thomas Summa Theologiae IaIIae, 91,1
• Embryo as organ of central control life begins
  at conception
• Co-authored articles e.g. Cloning, Aquinas the
  Embryonic Person
• a Thomist must say that if at the moment there
  exists living cellular material sufficiently
  prepared for hominisation, God, as the author of
  nature, will complete the natural process by the
  creation of a human soul
• (Ashley 1976)

12
(No Transcript)
13
Beginnings of Life

• Ashley JPII Institute for the Study of Marriage
  and Family, Washington DC
• Theologies of the Body completed 1985
• Humanae Vitae 1968 a watershed
• Infertility services commericialised ethical
  problems of storing fertilised eggs
• 1973 abortion legalised in USA

14
(No Transcript)
15
Women Pro-Life

• In our opinion our campaign of Pro-Life
  education will not make headway in our
  individualistic culture until it focuses its
  attention not just on the rights of the unborn
  child, but on the rights of women. The unborn
  child is unseen and asleep the woman is visible
  and consciously suffering
• (Ashley 1992)

16
(No Transcript)
17
The End of Life

• ORourke resolving treatment for patients
  imminently dying / permanently unconscious.
• Argued AHN could be witheld
• AHN artificial hydration nutrition
• PVS permanent vegetative state
• good ethical distinctions are as thin as silk
  and as strong as steel
• Vatican Declaration on Euthanasia 1980

18
(No Transcript)
19
Human Rights - Social Rights

• UNDHR tradition
• social context of these rights in USA extreme
  individualism privacy
• Justice in distribution of health care
• Person centred, preventative health care
• I am convinced that the only way to solve health
  care problems in our society is to insist
  continually that we must have universal health
  care coverage.
• (ORourke 1996)

20
(No Transcript)