To the
participants in a course on human pre-leukaemia
IS AN ABDICATION OF SCIENCE
On Friday, 15
November, the Holy Father met with participants in an international course
providing up-to-date information on “human pre-leukaemia” organized by the
Distinguished Professors,
Gentlemen,
1. I
take particular pleasure in being here among you, who have come to
I
greet each and every one of you cordially, in the awareness of the precious
service that your assiduous labour renders to man and to society today, and
will render still more in the near future.
The
meeting responds to the primary objective of bringing to the awareness of the
researchers the most recent results of scientific research on the subject, of
facilitating exchange of information, of singling out the specialized centres
of the particular field so as to facilitate the direction of patients.
2.
The hardships faced by those suffering from leukaemia are many, especially when
they are obliged to remain hospitalized for extended periods, or when isolation
becomes necessary. The troubles are more
serious when the patients are children or young persons who are constrained to live
for months or for years under therapeutic treatment, to abandon their studies,
their friendships, normal social contacts, to live in fear of a revival of the
malady and, in the case of acute forms, in anguish over their inability to
conquer it definitively.
Certain treatments, such as those you call
“support therapy”, themselves involve an accumulation of suffering, a psychological
burden whether for the patients themselves or for their families, who at times
abandon themselves to the hectic search of a hope, with journeys, and with heavy
expenditure of moral and financial energy.
You
are in fact in the position of having to confront one of the most resistant
evils of our time, against which the possibility of success often appears
extremely limited, even if the rate of survival today has notably increased
over that of the past.
3.
In most recent times, in fact, considerable advances have been made, especially
in the field of genetics, which have allowed the cause of many forms of
leukaemia to be singled out and more accurate diagnoses to be made, sometimes
even at a preventive stage, with the possibility of more timely intervention.
Thus
new perspectives have been opened, effective for facilitating a more complete
understanding of the mechanisms that are at the base of the process of
malignant transformation, for monitoring the progress of the therapy, for
maintaining the proper balance among the tissues of the organism.
Advances and prospects induce us to underline the benefits that derive
from the development of science when this is directed to the good of the person
through the cure of maladies. I refer to
that type of medicine which by definition is therapeutic in the precise sense
of the word, and which, while rejecting ends that are destructive and
manipulative of human life, directs its proper efforts to the still possible
and almost inexhaustible conquest of new cures.
I am
sure that public opinion and the authorities in particular will feel
increasingly sympathetic towards these conquests and towards these objectives
of a science which will receive the encouragement it deserves and be supplied
with the means necessary for research.
4.
Today's meeting offers us the opportunity of underlining, beyond its scientific
value, the great ethical value of the charitable efforts expended so lavishly
on this category of the sick by the medical personnel, doctors and paramedical
workers.
The
leukaemia patient is largely dependent on a whole network of interventions
which for the most part require a human support consisting of specific
preparation, of delicacy of approach, of inner richness.
You
have done well to concentrate on the moral and spiritual density of this task
in your reflections during the congressional labours, and to give special
consideration to human assistance as an essential component of support in the
most updated medical therapy, extending your attention even to the families of
those stricken by the malady. You have
done well to solicit the concern of the community and of those engaged in
voluntary service, so that these families may be able to support the weight of
a hospital treatment that at times becomes very prolonged and expensive,
without however neglecting the fulfilment of their daily duties, which never
cease to retain their own urgency and character of necessity.
To your own lofty reflections I would like to add the incomparable
contribution of the gift of faith, which helps us to perceive the presence of
the suffering Christ in the sick person and reveals the salvific value of
suffering that benefits the entire ecclesial Body, gives inestimable value to
the persons of the medical personnel who exercise the mission of Christ the
physician, expressed in the Gospel figure of the Good Samaritan (Salvifici Doloris, 28).
The
Lord of life, who promised the greatest recompense to one who visits a sick
person, affirming that whatever is done to one of the least of his little ones
is done to himself (Mt. 25, 36-40), will not fail to repay, with gifts that
surpass all expectations, the one who dedicates his time and his very life to
the human beings afflicted by one of the most tenacious evils of our era.
Respect for the
patient
5. I
would like also to mention a few ethical issues and a few problems that can be
encountered in the cure and in the medical treatment of these sick persons.
It
is necessary above all to recall the respect for the life and for the dignity
of the dying when, in spite of the treatment offered, death seems no longer
avoidable. The presence of suffering
even in the terminal phase, while it should stimulate every effort to lessen
the pain and to sustain the spirit of the dying should never allow “actions or
omissions which by their nature or in the intention of the agent have as their
goal to shorten the life so as to spare the patient or his relatives suffering”
(Declaration on euthanasia of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 5-5-1980, n. 11).
The
principle of the “proportionality of the cure” (ibid.,
n. IV), while it discourages the employment of purely experimental or
completely ineffectual operations, does not dispense from the valid therapeutic
task of sustaining life nor from the administration of the normal means of
vital support. Science, even when it is
unable to heal, can and should care for and assist the sick.
If
it had ceased struggling for life and engaging itself for the cure of human
diseases, medical science would never have been able to advance, nor to obtain
those successes for which it is universally recognized today.
Practices of euthanasia, more or less manifestly proclaimed, signal a
moment of regression and of abdication on the part of science, and an offence
to the dignity of the dying and also to his person.
Then
too, a great respect for the patient is necessary in the application of new
therapeutic methods still in the experimental stage, as can still be verified
in the case of leukaemia with the transplantation of bone marrow, when these
therapeutic methods would still show a high percentage of risk. We recall that “for lack of other remedies it
is licit to have recourse, with the consent of the sick person, to means made
available by the most advanced medical science, even if these still form part
of an experimental study and are not entirely free from risk. In accepting to undergo such treatment, the
sick person will even be able to give an example of generosity for the good of
humanity” (Declaration on euthanasia,
6.Distinguished Professors, knowing well that the engagement
of scientists and of doctors in general and of all of you in particular is
characterized by scientific exactness and by the highest moral awareness of the
tasks of medicine and of your professional service, I express my most intense
satisfaction regarding the results so far achieved, the current research projects, the charitable work carried forward
with assiduous and exemplary presence.
While expressing the most fervent good wishes for future programmes directed to the healing and to the care of these patients, to the moral support of their families, I am happy to impart to you, to the entire university community, to your dear ones and to your pupils, the Apostolic Blessing.