Bioethicist welcomes Pope's call for ethical infertility treatments

February 28, 2012: Pope Benedict XVI’s call for more research into ethical treatments for infertility as an alternative to in vitro fertilization is being applauded by a leading Catholic bioethicist.
“The Pope is quite right when he says that IVF is a profit making business – they make a lot of money and their success rates are not great,” Dr. Edward Furton of the National Catholic Bioethics Center told Catholic News Agency on Feb. 27.
“The profit motive here is not good. There are lesser known, more ethical, more effective methods which are being ignored because these labs are making money telling couples that IVF is the best or only option’ he added.
Furton said “a lot of good work is being done” across the globe in developing treatments that are both ethical and more effective than IVF. He particularly praised the work of Milwaukee’s Marquette University and Dr. Thomas Hilgers of the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha.

Pope Benedict made his remarks on Feb. 25 at a workshop hosted by the Pontifical Academy for Life to discuss ethically treating infertility. He said he is concerned that the field of human procreation seems to be dominated “by scientism and the logic of profit,” which often “restricts many other areas of research.”
The academy was holding its 18th General Assembly in Rome on the theme of “The diagnosis and treatment of infertility.” The body consists of 70 specialists appointed by the Pope and drawn from different branches of the biomedical sciences.