The book "Orthodoxy and Issues of Bioethics" published

In Russia, for the XXV International Christmas Educational Readings, the Patriarchal Commission for Family, Maternity and Childhood Protection has released the book "Orthodoxy and Issues of Bioethics" based on the proceedings of the Church and Society Council for Biomedical Ethics, reports the website of the Russian Orthodox Church.

"Orthodoxy and Issues of Bioethics" presents the results of the Council's work during 1998-2016 on the development of the position on the ethical issues of modern medicine as part of the Orthodox moral theology. The book releases official statements of the Council on the ethical issues of modern medicine and public health.

The organization of this new Church structure was directly related to the processes in modern health care, receiving an unprecedented scale. New biomedical technologies – in vitro fertilization, transplantation, resuscitation, cloning, medical genetics – create a powerful medical-biological controls and levers of power over human life. Advances in medical science are actively introduced in modern Russian society in which, unfortunately, moral norms are blurred and traditional values are impaired. Of social regulators of human behavior, all sorts of "rights" clearly dominate "responsibility". This situation can lead to abuse in society and medicine – to the commercialization of these technologies services, to the private and even budgetary funding of morally questionable biomedical research, to the cultivation of consumer relationship to man, to the introduction of the idea of permissibility to create the "higher" – elite – type of people and non-traditional family relations. Such trends threaten the foundations of Christian culture and the whole human society.