Bioethics chairman: not true we’re run by Curia!

Nationalist MP and bioethics consultative committee chairman Michael Asciak has fended off claims by a medical ethics expert that the committee entrusted with a study for legislation on in vitro fertilisation, was mainly occupied by clerics from the Curia.

Prof. Pierre Mallia, who was last chairman of the BCC in 2002, wrote in the University of Malta's research magazine Think that although theologians occupied 20-40% of the committee posts, the Catholic archdiocese still ignored proposals from the committee on IVF which banned embryo freezing.

Writing in MaltaToday today, Dr Asciak however said that it was untrue that the committee had hosted such a great number of theologians.

"The two priests who sit on the committee do so because of their academic expertise in ethics and bioethics, not because of their priesthood. One is a member of the European Group on Ethics and advisor on bioethics to the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso; and the other is a lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics at the University of Malta."

Asciak also said that the BCC's agenda on IVF was never determined by the Vatican's document "Donum Vitae", as claimed by Mallia, which calls IVF 'illicit' because it goes against normal human procreation; as well as that Catholic politicians should be guided by the respect of the embryo if legislating IVF.

Instead Asciak said that the committee's work had been guided by "the two paramount issues of order and the common good, within a civil state and civil society."

"Of course, if the preservation of nascent human life, which is a common good important for order in the Maltese state and society, also happens to be a good mentioned by 'Donum Vitae', the BCC cannot be held to blame... As for many committee members being Catholic, so incidentally are many Maltese, so it is an obvious outcome."

According to Prof. Mallia, moral theologians who did not oppose the IVF law within the bioethics commission - even when this banned embryo freezing - "suffered considerable damage to their careers unless they pulled the traditional line."

"Having ecclesiastical representatives at all stages does not mean that the Curia will agree - despite continuous reassurances that their representatives are on the committee... Many people working in good faith on the committees have suffered considerable damage to their careers unless they pulled the traditional line," Prof. Mallia claimed.

On his part, Dr Asciak took exception to this observation. "What I found especially strange is how Prof. Pierre Mallia can make these gratuitous assertions when he has not been a member of the committee for these last ten years, unless of course he is reporting on what was happening prior to ten years ago."

Malta's IVF law was approved by both sides of the House in 2012 with the introduction of free IVF through egg freezing, or oocyte vitrification, and a ban on embryo freezing, IVF services to gay couples or single mothers, and sperm donation.