Dawstwo organów a obowiązek poszanowania integralności ciała ludzkiego

Abstract

Modem day’s ethical, theological and moral reflection do not have any serious reservations about donorship, if it conforms to clearly specified principles, both of ethical and medical nature. Referring to interpersonal solidarity in justifying the donorship of organs, tissues or cells, is today commonly justified in view of anthropological, ethical and theological reflection. It is also officially affirmed by the Magisterium of the Church. Referring, however, in this kind of operations to the principle of solidarity does not give, of itself, an answer to a serious objection. The latter results from the sanctity of human organism and indisposability as a whole and in its particular parts. This reservation, however, is not a more serious problem, if one understands well the sense of respect for the integrity of human organism. The said sanctity does not allow for human life or health to be taken in possession. It does not allow for an arbitrary manipulation of man’s biological structures or treating them as material objects. At the same time, however, the sanctity in question does not deprive man of the right to interfere in those structures when it is demanded by the care for health, neither does it negate man’s participation in a prudent administration of life and health in accordance with God’s intention. An express indication of that indication being man’s calling to perfection and his fulfillment of his personal mission within the earthly reality (as an active participant of the work of creation) and in human fellowship. Love and gift of oneself made for others is the noblest expression of that mission, its pattern being the Person of Jesus Christ in His earthly mission, especially in His death on the cross. There is yet one more question to answer: was Pius XII wrong when he firmly excluded nontherapeutic infringement upon the integrity of human organism, and John Paul II changed the teaching of the Church in the question under consideration? Not in the least! It was already Pius XI who formulated, and Pius XII would repeat, the principle that man may, for important reasons, dispose of his own body, his organs, but only within their natural finality. That principle is invariably topical. What is changed in both cases - in the teachings of Pius XII and John Paul II - is the anthropological viewpoint. While Pius XII limits himself to the finality of organism, John Paul II speaks about the finality of organism as a constitutive element of the human person. As particular parts which make up human organism have no sense or finality beyond this organism, to which they belong, in the same manner organism in itself has no sense, value or its proper finality, along with its organs, tissues and cells, if it does not remain within the function of the person as such. Consequently, if it is not linked with the finality of his or her existence, with his or her fulfillment of vocation in the perspective of participation in the created reality and in the perspective of salvation. Ultimately, this means that man, in proportion to some important reasons, may dispose of himself, of the elements of his corporeal structure in as much as such integrity is included within his proper, as a person, finality. Thus it does not mean an arbitrary possession of oneself. It does not make him unable to fulfil the mission given to him by God, and does not destroy his place in the history of mankind.