‘Bioethics has forgotten about the ethics,’ says Lejeune Foundation president

'We have bioethics committees for which the sole question is: will the law allow it?'

The Jerome Lejeune Foundation held its Third International Bioethics Conference last week, with Pope Leo XIV sending his greeting to the conference.

Jean-Marie Le Mene at the Third International Bioethics Conference, May 31, 2025. Credit: Iván W. Jaques/Jerome Lejeune Foundation.

The pope called on participants to “favor approaches to science that are always authentically more humane and respectful of the integrity of the person,” and to “persevere in the study and application of scientific knowledge in the service of truth and the common good.”

After the conference, The Pillar spoke with the president of the Jerome Lejeune Foundation, Jean-Marie Le Mene, about bioethics, Ven. Jerome Lejeune, and the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Le Mene has been the president of the Jerome Lejeune Foundation since 1996 and became a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2009.

The interview has been translated from French and has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you think that contemporary bioethics reflects the deepest truths of human existence? What should be the anthropological basis of bioethics?

Bioethics emerged after World War II from an intuition that was right at the time, aimed at seeing how morality could be applied to situations arising from new technologies, such as the atomic bomb.

But today bioethics has forgotten that in bioethics there is ‘bio’ and ‘ethics,’ we’ve particularly forgotten about ethics.

At least in developed countries, we have bioethics committees in which the sole question is: will the law allow it, or will it not allow it? But at no point do we really ask ourselves whether it is right or wrong. Bioethics no longer answers that question.

There are ethics committees in hospitals, for example, to assess whether a particular treatment, protocol, or surgical procedure is good or bad for the patient. That’s fine, but at the macro level, we apply the law and simply say that there is a majority of people who want medically assisted procreation or euthanasia. So we vote for it, and the ethics committee says it’s okay.

And in 1984, when these committees came into vogue, Doctor Lejeune played on words talking about “éthique étatique” meaning ethics was driven by the state not by conscience.

It’s been a long time since the promulgation of Humanae vitae, Evangelium vitae, and Veritatis splendor.

Do we need a new encyclical that deals with contemporary bioethical issues?

I think that the fundamentals to answer these questions are already in the shortest and oldest encyclical of the ones you mentioned, Humanae vitae. It’s still a powerful document. Pope Saint Paul VI really foreshadows a lot of the issues and dilemmas we face today. There we already have the rationale behind the Church’s opposition to abortion and contraception.

But there was also the foreshadowing of the fact that if gametes, that is sperm and eggs, were made available to scientists, they would take them and be able to manufacture beings and manipulate them afterwards.

Jérôme Lejeune thought that “the sources of life,” as he used to call the gametes, should benefit from much greater protection than somatic cells, which are basically all the other types of cells. Sex cells should not be considered as body parts for which a donation can be requested.

These cells serve no purpose except to make a new human being. Seeing this, shouldn't they benefit from a special degree of protection?

Do we have the right to give away these gametes? I don't think so, but otherwise, in all the teachings of the Church that you have quoted, we have practically everything we need to address these issues.

With more contemporary issues, such as surrogate motherhood, the Church has already spoken clearly about these matters.

What will be complicated and needs new bioethical reflection is when we get to the point in which scientists can manufacture synthetic human beings. Embryos made in a laboratory by scientists already exist. Several techniques are available. These embryos are destined to be sacrificed for research.

The fact that these embryonic structures are not meant to live and are only viable up to a point for the time being is not a reason to say that this technique is morally acceptable.

What should be Pope Leo’s priority with regard to bioethical issues?

We always insist so much on the need for the Church to repeat things, but there's no need to say anything new because the Church's position is quite simple, in fact.

The Church has already stated its position, but people, even Christians, have a hard time understanding the morality of sexuality and reproduction, that is, everything related to contraception, assisted reproduction, and abortion.

When you talk about chimeras, manufactured embryos, everyone says that it's horrible. But that's not the problem.

The problem lies upstream. Everything starts with contraception and with making gametes available for experimentation and to create embryos in the lab. What's difficult for people to understand is consistency. People need to be consistent. You can't reject transhumanism and not be consistent in your own life.

So, I think there's work to be done in terms of outreach and pastoral care, particularly in aging, developed countries.

In other countries the reactions are not the same. But we can clearly see that the Church's teaching on these issues has had a very hard time penetrating Western Europe. It’s an enormous issue. But the Church’s teaching is quite simple.

What was the greatest legacy of Ven. Jerome Lejeune?

He showed that it was possible to be both a great scientist and a great Christian, while also being a family man.

He never renounced his faith, and he was one of the most important scientists of his time.

He showed there are things that scientists do not understand. But they can allow themselves to see that there is a God behind it all and to be amazed by it.

Jérôme Lejeune used to say that [God] was the simplest hypothesis.

What should be the Pontifical Academy for Life’s role in this pontificate? How should it approach life issues and bioethics?

Should it be a space for dialogue between different ethical perspectives or should it be more unapologetically pro-life?

The Academy for Life has evolved a lot over the last 30 years.

So there are adjustments to be made, because the academy has evolved during these 30 years, there have also been many developments and transgressions in bioethics and technology.

Pope Francis was the first pope to talk about an integral ecology, in which man has his place and is at the center. So, there’s more openness to dialogue with society in these matters.

But the pro-life dimension should remain intrinsic to the academy.

We must strike a balance between complicated technical developments and the concerns of the Church and then the necessity of continuing its mission as a pro-life institution.

But I think that all of this is part of a very long continuum, so you can't take a snapshot of the academy at a given moment and then stick with that snapshot and say that “this” is the academy.

Almost all the inaugural members of the academy, which was founded in 1994, are now dead or quite old. All of them were appointed by the proposition of Lejeune. The academy was a creation of Ven. Jerome Lejeune and Saint John Paul II.

Lejeune died a few months after the academy was founded. But it could be said he is the cornerstone of the academy.