Pontifical Life Academy leader responds to Nobel choice

(Oct.05,2010) The President of the Pontifical Academy for Life has expressed perplexity at the Award for the Inventor of In-vitro Fertilization. Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula acknowledged that the winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine is a scientist to be recognized, but he said he would have voted for other candidates. The prelate released a statement in response to Robert Edwards, the doctor, who invented in-vitro fertilization, winning on Monday the 2010 Nobel Prize for medicine. The choice for Edwards, he said, "does not seem entirely out of place," as the 85-year-old retired professor is in line with the logic followed by the Nobel committee and is not a person who can be belittled.
Bishop Carrasco de Paula acknowledged that Edwards began a new and important chapter in the field of human reproduction, adding that the best results are visible to everyone, beginning with Louise Brown, the first baby born from in vitro fertilization, who already is in her 30s, and is herself the mother of a baby, conceived in an entirely natural way. Nevertheless, the Vatican official contended, there are many causes for perplexity regarding such a choice. He reflected that without Edwards, there would be no market for selling ovums, nor freezers full of embryos waiting to be transferred to a uterus, or more likely, to be used for investigation or to die forgotten and abandoned by everyone. Bishop Carrasco de Paula suggested that Edwards "opened the wrong door." The scientist "has not modified the pathological framework and the epidemiological framework of infertility," he affirmed.