14 How the Church Has Changed the World A. Decree on undesirable genes or chromosomes. B. Deliver unhappy parents from unwanted pregnancies. C. Discard embryos that did not fit standard requirements. D. Dispose of newborns not reaching minimal specifications of normalcy. E. And generally destroy, delete, or decry any human condition voted against by the above-mentioned board of advisers of the National Institute of Death. Rejecting that, and other partial approaches, Dr. Lejeune concluded his address with a plea for humility and compassion, “humility because we must recognize we have no ready-made answers, because geneticists have not broken the secret of the human condition, and because scientific arguments are of little help in ethical issues; compassion because even the most disinherited belongs to our kin, because these victims are poorer than the poorest, and because the sorrow of the parents cannot be consoled by science. But should we capitulate in the face of our own ignorance and propose to eliminate those we cannot help?” “For millennia, medicine has striven to fight for life and health and against disease and death,” he said. “Any reversal of the order of these terms of reference would entirely change medicine itself.”
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