Human Embryo Transfer and the Theology of the Body

Author(s):  
Catherine Althaus
The Lancet ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 318 (8255) ◽  
pp. 1104-1105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Craft ◽  
Fraser Mcleod ◽  
Keith Edmonds

1991 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. P. Beliles ◽  
N. G. Makris ◽  
W. J. Scott

A compartmental pharmacokinetic-mathematical model for the time-dependent distribution of hydroxyurea (HU) in both the maternal plasma and embryonic fluids of pregnant rats and rhesus monkeys was developed. Across species scaling was based on maternal plasma clearance rates and compartmental sizes as a percent of the body weight of the dam. Mathematical optimization provided the compartmental transfer rates. The estimated maternal and embryonic concentrations of HU correlated well with the experimental pharmacokinetic data regarding both time and quantity for both the rat and the monkey. When the biological effective dose was considered to be the embryonic HU concentration over time (AUC), the dose to the individual embryos was higher in the monkeys (392 mg HU hr/L/day) than in the rats (69 mg HU hr/L/day) at an applied dose of 100 mg HU/kg administered to the dams. The AUC doses are consistent with the evaluation of the embryos of both species for teratogenic changes and embryonic death. The effect of repeated doses as compared with a single dose given only on one day of gestation was examined in the rat. Because of the rapid maternal clearance the carryover of embryonic HU concentration from one day to the next was minimal. A single treatment on Day 9 only was estimated to be sufficient to produce the adverse embryonic effects of HU on Days 9 through 12 as reported by Wilson et al. The sensitivity of the embryo to HU decreased with increasing embryonic age. The implications of the pharmacokinetic simulation and the temporal susceptibility for ongoing clinical trials of HU in the treatment of sickle cell anemia were reviewed. A human embryo dose of 69 mg HU hr/L/day was estimated to result from an i.v. dose of 10 mg/kg to the mother. This concentration produced no effect in the rat. An i.v. dose of 50 mg HU/mg was estimated to result in a human embryo dose of 353 mg HU hr/L/day which approaches a Rhesus monkey embryo dose that produced adverse effects in all embryos.


2019 ◽  
pp. 127-150
Author(s):  
Katherine Dugan

This chapter examines missionaries’ romantic relationships and argues that the way these young adults date, marry, and procreate shapes their position in the US Catholic landscape. These emerging adults develop wide-ranging and gendered interpretations of chastity. They discipline themselves and their co-missionaries to follow Catholic dictums articulated in Humanae Vitae and Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body More than personal ethics, however, this chapter posits that missionaries’ practices of Catholic romance are part of their pro-life politics. How and why these Catholic millennials embody the transitions from singlehood to family life proclaims their proud, dynamically orthodox Catholic alternative to contemporary sexual ethics in the United States.


Horizons ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-45
Author(s):  
Krešimir Šimić

After the initial contextualization of the topic, by following Nancy's juxtaposition strategy, this article points to two senses of the body that, according to him, have defined the Western culture. The first one, logos (principle precedes the body and gives it meaning); the second, sarx (the meaning of the body comes from the body itself, so that the body comes out of itself, alienates itself, and deconstructs its own representative activities). Next, I give a more precise depiction of Nancy's deconstruction of the body through an analysis of Corpus because it is precisely with this work (in the chapter On the Soul, which is also the title of Aristotle's well-known treatise dealing first and foremost with the body, and in the chapter The Extension of the Soul) that Nancy most explicitly deconstructs hylomorphic somatology, which largely influenced the Christian theology of the body. Furthermore, I interpret Genesis 2:18–25 (in constant dialogue with Nancy) as a theological reaction on Nancy's deconstruction of the body. In other words, on the basis of biblical texts, the “mystery of the body” is depicted. Finally, the article ends with a comparison of Nancy's “inoperative community” (communauté désoeuvrée) and the Body of Christ (church).


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