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VATICAN-EMBRYO Nov-6-2007 (400 words) xxxi
Participants: More knowledge of embryo's origin, development needed
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A better scientific understanding of the origin and development of the human embryo can help answer many of today's hot-button bioethical issues, said participants in a Vatican-sponsored project.
Participants in the project, "Science, Technology and the Ontological Quest," were to hold an international conference in Rome Nov. 15-17. It was to bring together medical doctors, scientists, jurists, philosophers and theologians to discuss the genesis of human life.
Open, honest and accurate study and debate can help contribute to "an authentic sense of mankind," said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, which coordinates the project.
The archbishop and others involved in the conference spoke Nov. 6 at a Vatican press conference.
Titled "Ontogeny and Human Life," the conference will try to promote dialogue between experts and scholars from different schools of thought, and prompt them to work together "for the quest for truth," said Pietro Ramellini, professor at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum.
The concept of genesis should have a greater place in today's studies of biology, he said, because the "question of the identity and status of the human embryo" has raised "numerous and hot bioethical debates that have had important social and political repercussions for many nations."
Father Rafael Pascual, dean of the philosophy department at Regina Apostolorum, told Catholic News Service that understanding the origin of life is key to protecting people's innate and inviolable dignity and rights.
In today's world, where society must confront bioethical issues such as artificial reproduction, cloning, genetic manipulation and embryonic stem-cell research, "the study of human life from the point of view of its individual origin takes on a particular concern," he said.
Participants also will seek to elaborate on issues that emerged during a conference Regina Apostolorum organized five years ago on evolution, he said.
Father Pascual said some consider ontogeny -- the origin and development of individual organisms -- to be analogous or parallel to the origin and evolution of species.
"There is no doubt that the study of ontogeny may be significant for better understanding what life is and how it may have evolved," he said.
In fact, participants said the next "Science, Technology and the Ontological Quest" project will be a conference on evolution in 2009, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."
END
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