Professor Jack Mahoney SJ pleads eloquently for allowing “babies to be created with DNA from three people” (“Where’s the harm?”, 7 February), but his arguments are unconvincing. He dismisses as a “long stop or default objection” the position that an embryo is a human being from the moment of conception. That objection is relevant, true, but only to procedures that involve discarding spare embryos – but he speaks also of people who consider a young embryo “living tissue but not get sufficiently formed to constitute an ensouled human person”, a view that is not only contrary to modern Catholic teaching but, in my opinion, philosophically unsustainable.More to the point, he distinguishes between “somatic” and “germ
19 February 2015, The Tablet
Slippery slope
Get Instant Access
Continue Reading
Register for free to read this article in full
Subscribe for unlimited access
From just £30 quarterly
Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
The full weekly edition in print and digital including our 179 years archive.
PDF version to view on iPad, iPhone or computer.
Already a subscriber? Login