Religious attitudes to matters of life medical ethics

CHRISTIANITY:

your body is the temple of the holy spirit that lives in you

CHRISTIANITY:

Do not kill - Ten Commandments

CHRISTIANITY:

then the Lod God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

CHRISTIANITY:

let us make mankind in our image, and in our likeness - Genesis

CHRISTIANITY:

Hannah had none [children]... and the Lord had closed her womb

CHRISTIANITY:

you knit me together in my mother's womb

CHRISTIANITY:

a human being...needs to be treated...as an end in itself, not a tool for someone else's agenda - Archbishop of Canterbury

CHRISTIANITY:

love your neighbour as you love yourself

ISLAM:

if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people

ISLAM:

It is He [Allah] who created you from a simple person

ISLAM:

do not take life - which Allah has made sacred - except for just cause

FERTILITY TREATMENT - medical procedure to assist an infertile couple to have a child

IVF - a scientific method of making a woman pregnant, which does not involve sex. Conception occurs via egg and sperm being placed into test tube

TEST-TUBE BABY - term used for a baby created outside of the mother's body

SURROGACY - woman's egg fertilised artificially by another woman's partner. traditional surrogacy: surrogate mother's eggs and sperm from intended father used. gestational surrogacy: using IVF to fertilise mother's own eggs and implant them into surrogate mother's womb. Once the baby is born it is handed over to the couple for whom she carried it.

ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION - sperm medically inserted into the vagina to assist pregnancy. AIH husband's sperm, AID donor sperm. Both methods involve masturbation to produce semen.

TRANSPLANT SURGERY - replacement of a faulty organ with a healthy organ taken from a donor, usually short after the donor's brain death

BLOOD TRANSFUSION - when a patient is given extra blood as part of an operation. Many transplants can be successfully carried out without a blood transfusion. Such 'bloodless transplants' are acceptable to Jehovah's Witnesses.

HUMAN GENETIC ENGINEERING - the modification of gene make-up to change the features of a human

EMBRYOLOGY -the study of human embryos

EMBRYO -fertilised ovum at about 12-14 days when implanted into the wall of the womb

DESIGNER BABIES - babies with gender and characteristics chosen by their parents, which is currently illegal

SAVIOUR SIBLINGS - a sibling genetically compatible with a sick child that is implanted and born to use stem cells (e.g. bone marrow) to treat the sick child

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES:

For the life of a creature is in the blood

CHRISTIANITY

thou shall not commit adultery

ISLAM:

Allah has given us the potential to develop new technology

REPRODUCTIVE CLONING - The creation of an identical copy of an organism, which could be an animal or potentially a human (illegal). common in selective animal breeding

THERAPEUTIC CLONING - The aim is to clone biological material to produce embryos from which stem cells can be taken and used in research to find treatments for diseases

CHRISTIANITY:

people have the right to choose and free will is God-given

Stage 1 - laboratory testing, tissue samples are tested in vitro and by computer stimulation. Drug tested for toxicity on animals and cleared by testing on humans

Stage 2 -human testing, drug tested for safety and side effects on healthy volunteers. Tested for effectiveness and side effects on selected people w/ relevant illnesses. Tested for full information on large numbers of ill people

Stage 3 - drug licensing, drug tested more widely against other drugs, for side effects and long-term risks and benefits

CHRISTIANITY:

God said to Adam and Eve 'be fruitful and multiply'

CHRISTIANITY:

The Lord gave life, and now he has taken it away

CHRISTIANITY:

Every possible act of cloning humans is intrinsically evil - the Pope

ISLAM:

none can be their mothers except those who gave them birth -

CHRISTIANITY:

So God created man in his own image