Kurt Sansone
IVF laboratory at Mater Dei has everything but patients
Mater Dei Hospital has a fully-equipped IVF laboratory, The Sunday Times has learnt. However, it is not being used because the costly treatment for infertile couples is not yet available on the national health service.
Sources said that the hospital's laboratory is also stocked with special cryopreservation containers normally used to freeze sperm.
In a one-sentence reply to a series of questions, a spokesman for the Parliamentary Secretary for Health said that "policy regarding IVF has still to be developed and direction for service development has to be given from higher political levels."
According to hospital sources, this means that even though the state-of-the-art hospital has the capacity to provide IVF treatment, it will not be offered on the national health service unless Parliament enacts legislation to regulate the sector.
Other questions sent to the Parliamentary Secretary relating to the cost of the laboratory, as well as whether there are plans to offer IVF at Mater Dei or create a sperm bank, remained unanswered.
IVF is available in Malta, but only at one private hospital, and the sector remains unregulated.
In 2005, the Parliamentary Committee for Social Affairs, chaired by Clyde Puli, had drawn up a detailed report with recommendations on the best way forward to regulate the sector.
The committee had heard the opinions of medical and ethical experts, couples who underwent IVF treatment and individuals who felt they had something to contribute to the debate.
The extensive report was passed on to the then Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg for draft legislation to be prepared. However, no law was ever tabled in Parliament.
The debate on IVF resurfaced recently when the Church Theological Commission reiterated the stand adopted by the Vatican against artificial fertilisation.
The president of the Theological Commission, Fr Hector Scerri, said fertilisation should not take place in a lab or a test tube. He insisted the Church can never accept artificial fertilisation, even if it does not involve harming, destroying, freezing or experimenting on the human embryo.
Fr Scerri said the Church was open to IVF legislation, not IVF. He explained that the Church is willing to participate in social dialogue about how legislation to regulate IVF should be introduced, but this would only apply to those who choose to act outside the Catholic faith.
However, the chairman of the Bioethics Consultative Committee Michael Asciak, who participated in the Social Affairs Committee's eight-month discussion in 2005, had also said that the Vatican's document on biotechnology should encourage legislation rather than hinder it.
He insisted that the parliamentary committee's recommendations three years ago should be taken on board by the government.
Fr Peter Serracino Inglott recently told The Sunday Times that the sector should be regulated at the earliest opportunity and he echoed the Pope's statement that a country's legislation need not necessarily be in conformity with moral principles.
"If every sin was made a crime, we would have a totalitarian government, which is the opposite of what a government should be," Fr Serracino Inglott had said.
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Joe Zammit
Jan 20th 2009, 18:02
The Catholic Church holds that it is ethically unacceptable to dissociate
procreation from the integrally personal context of the conjugal act. Human procreation is a
personal act of a husband and wife, which is not capable of substitution. The enormous number of abortions involved in the process of in vitro fertilization vividly
illustrates how the replacement of the conjugal act by a technical procedure leads to a weakening of the respect owed to every human being. Recognition of such respect is, on the other hand, promoted by the intimacy of husband and wife nourished by married love.
Marianna Galea Xuereb
Jan 18th 2009, 23:31
@ P Debono
Church teachings or dictatorship apart, there is no such thing as an absolute right to have children. We should be more concerned about the right of each and every individual to
(a) be conceived as naturally as possible – i.e. without resorting to grossly over invasive fertility “treatments” because despite all the so-called medical “advances” simple, old fashioned natural conception is still the best method to ensure the greatest chance that a child will enjoy long term health.
and
(b) be brought up in an adequately safe, loving, healthy and emotionally balanced environment by suitable adults.
P Debono, just how many couples do you know that begot a healthy child (who suffered from no long term health or behaviour problems) even though they resorted to highly invasive fertility “treatments”?
And believe me, I know about the pain of being childless and yearning to have a child because I myself have only ONE child - who was born over FOUR years after I got married and who must now go through life siblingless because I am now too old to reasonably expect to have any more children.
laurence schembri
Jan 18th 2009, 22:34
Why equip a costly IVF lab if it is not going to be used, another white elephant.
Seeing the state of our cemeteries and the need to enlarge them, would it not have been a good idea to build a Crematorium instead? A lot of Maltese send their loved ones to foreign lands for cremation it is less costly, it is clean and above all it is serene.
Tim Ripard
Jan 18th 2009, 21:56
@ Steve Bonello
Translation: The Church wants to influence legislation that ONLY affects non-Catholics because the Church always knows what is right and its adherents obey its will, whilst non-Catholics have to be legislated against. 'Dieu le veut' (God wills it, as they said about the Crusades).
Joe Zammit
Jan 18th 2009, 20:58
Far from discouraging scientific research, the Catholic Church is expressing her hope that many Christians dedicate themselves to biomedicine and that the results of such research can also be used to benefit those in need. But, and it is a big BUT, and all governments are bound by this BUT, any legislation must not go against Natural Law. The Catholic Church was founded by God-man Jesus Christ, who knows what all humanity needs, to enlighten us on what is good to be done and what is evil to be avoided. The end does not justify the means.
Joe Zammit
Jan 18th 2009, 20:45
The morality of the Catholic Church is the morality that God wants us to follow. Those who follow it will be blessed by God and experience the joy and peace that only God can give. Those who behave according to their stubborn mind must be pitied. The morality the Catholic Church teaches will continue to echo in the Maltese Islands and in the whole world till the end of time. Her morality is always sound and fresh.
Joe Zammit
Jan 18th 2009, 20:40
The government and the opposition know well that all legislation must be in accordance with Natural Law.
Oscar Cassar
Jan 18th 2009, 13:21
Do not continue to make more damage to our church while hurting the most vulnerable persons. Jesus came on earth to teach as how to love more then how to be loved, to forgive each other more then how to condemn each other. How can we condemn other wrongdoings, war ecc when between us (the small Maltese community) we are capable of make such barriers? I sincerely do not imagine a religious person, sitting officially on a board or commissions in other countries and speaking like Fr Hector Scerri to the media. Please take actions before it will be too late.
Raymond Sammut
Jan 18th 2009, 13:07
@ Fr Hector Scerri
Further, may I remind you, that there are hundreds of children worldwide who received their God given life through in vitro fertilisation. Your continued use of the word "artificial" can be regarded as derogatory.
Joseph Schembri
Jan 18th 2009, 12:54
There is something odd with our values if we stand by and watch parent-less children crave love and parents while we push 'nature' to the limit and produce babies in glass dishes. This is just my opinion but I'd much rather have been adopted than been conceived from frozen (then thawed) sperm and ova in a petri dish.
The Church, notwithstanding all the Church bashers out there has its heart in the right place!
Steve Bonello
Jan 18th 2009, 12:39
"Fr Scerri... explained that the Church is willing to participate in social dialogue about how legislation to regulate IVF should be introduced, but this would only apply to those who choose to act outside the Catholic faith."
Any volunteers out there willing to explain this statement?
carmen caruana
Jan 18th 2009, 12:27
Why don't the government pass this law and IVF laboratory starts to work?! I hope it's not because of the church. If i remember well we have separation of church and government on this island.
P Debono
Jan 18th 2009, 12:24
Comments like the one by Father Serracino Inglott are exactly the reason why the Church is frowned upon by most of the Maltese community.
How dare you deprive an infertile couple the right to have children?! Comments like these are what make me regret the fact that I share the same religion as this man.
Raymond Sammut
Jan 18th 2009, 12:00
@ Fr Hector Scerri
In vitro fertilisation is not "artificial fertilisation". In vitro fertilisation takes place between two consenting persons, a man and a woman. It is a very real process, and at no stage it is "artificial". Insisting on the word "artificial" only hurts your credibility on the subject.
V Fenech
Jan 18th 2009, 11:07
At 16 years old, accounting students learn how to conduct a job cost or quotation. Apparently the government's executives, which are usually kept secret, do not even have these elimentary basics of trying to prevent losses.
The health sector is another main point in the PN manifesto which tests the credibility of Dr Gonzi. Similar to the surplus issue, GonziPN promised that he would turn the local health sector into a European centre of excellence.
Dr Gonzi, if you already know that your ambitions are now unachieveable, at least give the taxpayers what they deserve. Yes Mr John Dalli, we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch but apparently under a PN government there is no money and neither a lunch!
Oscar Cassar
Jan 18th 2009, 10:36
If Fr Scerri cannot accept artificial fertilisation for those in need and that cannot have children otherwise, how can he impose or simply not except the process even if this does not involve harming, destroying, freezing or experimenting on the human embryo? By such a statement he is admitting that the issue here is no longer because of abortion as it was stated by the GensIllum since 2005.
In my opinion, quotes like those of Fr Serracino Inglott and Mr Michael Asciak that is the chairman of the Bioethics Consultative Committee simply confirm that the Maltese Curia is much more conservative then the Vatican and surly certain argument are not improving the local church approach with the citizens. Unfortunately as I once already wrote in this blog, the more things (or faces) change, the more things remain the same.
Oscar Cassar
Jan 18th 2009, 10:31
What is the use of having a state-of-the-art hospital with fully-equipped IVF laboratory, having a democratically elected parliament, and having Parliamentary Committees working on an issue when it seems that the Nation needs the approval of the Theological Commission for the Parliament to enact a legislation to regulate the sector?
How can the Church be willing to participate in social dialogue about how to regulate the IVF legislation, but at the same time imposing that this would only apply to those who choose to act outside the Catholic faith? Would this mean that the parents will be excommunicated or that once the child is born, he or she will not be ‘officially’ baptised like in the case of children single parents?
David Farrugia
Jan 18th 2009, 10:29
Making just one infertile couple happy with a child makes all the church's opposition to IVF futile.
This medieval morality just has to be ignored.
Mike Magri
Jan 18th 2009, 10:04
QUESTION:-.
If this IVF System was, and still is a very grey area for it to be used in Malta, WHY did we have to spend SO MUCH of our tax payer`s money on something that WE CANNOT MAKE USE OF...!!??!!??
In my opinion, this is YET ANOTHER IRRESPONSIBLE decision by the PN Government, when it comes to Financial and Political Accountability and Planning...!!!
THEY JUST DON`T EXIST.... PERIOD....