Vatican leads chorus objecting to human cloning

The Vatican, headed by Pope John Paul II, calls Britain's decision "immoral"

In this story: Embryo cloning attracts supporters Religious divide Conscience vote RELATED STORIES, SITES

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican has condemned Britain's proposed plan to ease legislation that currently bans all forms of human cloning.

The British Government said on Wednesday it would introduce legislation that allowed research on human embryo cells, raising the possibility that Britain could become the first country to clone humans.

Known as therapeutic cloning, the process involves growing organs for transplants but is criticised because it relies on embryonic cells that die as a result of the experiments.

MESSAGE BOARD Genetic tinkering

The Vatican described the decision by the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair as "immoral and running against the law and justice."

Top Italian officials supported the stance of the Vatican both on the moral grounds espoused by the Catholic Church -- which condemns artificial procreation -- and on legal grounds.

Pierluigi Castagnetti, secretary general of the Italian Popular Party (PPI), said: "There is a European directive banning human cloning. France, as president of the EU, should call an extraordinary research ministers council immediately."

A 1997 Italian law forbids "all form of experimentation or intervention whose objective, even indirectly, is the cloning of humans or animals."

The change to the British legislation would impose a 14-day age limit on embryos used in experiments that experts say could some day prevent or cure scores of diseases.

But the decision provoked a stern response from the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which said it was absurd to divide the life of an embryo in two, "as if it was a football game."

Embryo cloning attracts supporters

There were, however, voices of dissent that went against the strictly Catholic mainstream opinion of Italian society.

Former EU commissioner and Radical Party figurehead Emma Bonino expressed trust in the British government's handling of the issue saying: "Blair has avoided the Far West and any wild or uncontrolled experiments." The director of Milan's Pharmaceutical Institute, Mario Negri, said that "human cloning is a magnificent medical and scientific opportunity".

In Germany, Health Minister Andrea Fischer said on Thursday that she was opposed to human embryo cloning in Germany.

In response, a spokesman for Britain's Health Department said its conclusions were based on "extensive and careful consideration and consultation."

"Those conclusions strike a balance between the fact that the embryo is entitled to respect but that this should be weighed against the benefits from proposed research," the spokesman said.

Religious divide

In Britain, opinion was even divided within religious circles, with the Roman Catholics unimpressed by the government's move and Anglicans defending the decision.

Cardinal Thomas Winning, the chairman of the Bioethics Committee of Catholic Bishops of Britain and Ireland, said the experiments were immoral.

"Obtaining stem cells from a human embryo is wrong, because it involves killing a human. Human life is inviolably sacred, both before and after any arbitrary 14-day deadline," Winning said.

Under the current rules of a 1990 Act, research using embryos less than 14 days old is allowed for only five purposes including treating infertility.

Conscience vote

Anglican experts disagreed with Winning. Church of England adviser on ethical issues, John Polkinghorne, argued that the government's recommendations did not breach current restrictions on embryonic research.

"What we have is just an extension of the purposes for which embryo research can be undertaken under the same rigorous controls that were set out in 1990," Polkinghorne said.

He said that an embryo younger than 14 days was merely a mass of undifferentiated cells.

"Embryos are entitled to profound respect but not the same respect as is accorded to a full human being," he said.

The government has said Prime Minister Tony Blair will leave it to members of parliament to decide in a free vote whether scientists should be allowed to clone human embryos.

Liam Donaldson, the government's chief medical officer, said "reproductive cloning" that tries to create identical individuals in the same way that scientists created Dolly the sheep in 1997 and a litter of pigs this month should remain illegal.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

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UK Xenotransplantation Interim Regulatory Authority
The Vatican
Science Magazine
National Bioethics Advisory Commission
Bioethics.net

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