US, Italian Scientists Announce Plans to Clone Humans
Philippines Church Says No to Cloning Human Embryos
ROME, Mar. 9, 01 (CWNews.com) - US and Italian scientists
announced on Friday that they plan to create the first
cloned human being, despite criticism from many quarters
including religious, pro-life, human rights, and bioethics
groups.
Panayiotis Zavos, an American, and Severino Antinori, an
Italian, said they plan to clone humans to provide children
to infertile couples. The pair had previously made headlines
by helping a 62-year-old woman give birth. Zavos and
Antinori said they will conduct the cloning experiments in
an undisclosed Mediterranean country to avoid local
controversy and laws which have already been passed to ban
human cloning.
"Cloning may be considered as the last frontier to overcome
male sterility and give the possibility to infertile males
to pass on their genetic pattern," Antinori told a news
conference. "Some people say we are going to clone the
world, but this isn't true... I'm asking all of us in the
scientific community to be prudent and calm," he said.
"We're talking science, we're not here to create a fuss."
Bishop Elio Sgreccia, head of the John Paul II Institute
for Bioethics at Rome's Gemelli hospital, said human
cloning raised profoundly disturbing ethical issues. "Those
who made the atomic bomb went ahead in spite of knowing
about its terrible destruction," he told Reuters Television
before the cloning meeting started. "But this doesn't mean
that it was the best choice for humanity."
"The forecasts (about human cloning) sadden us but don't
scare us," he said.
Meanwhile in Manila, The Philippine
bishops' conference has condemned the cloning of human
embryos, a procedure which goes against human nature and
violates two fundamental principles on which all human
rights are based: the equality among human beings and the
principle of non-discrimination.
"Cloning of human embryos cannot be justified, no matter
how much good it might provide for humanity,especially
persons affected with irreversible and incurable
illnesses," said by Archbishop Leonardo Legaspi, OP, of
Nueva Caseras, chairman of the Office on Bio-ethics of the
Philippine Bishops' Conference. Scientists claim that the
research would not only help studies on infertility and
detection of birth defects, it would also be used to open
the possibility of transplants to prevent or cure scores of
illnesses such as Parkinson's disease and diabetes.
From the point of view of Christian morality, the
archbishop affirmed, human cloning is inadmissible for six
reasons: (1) It is against nature to create an embryo
artificially, without any connection with sexuality; (2)
Cloning implies the destruction of manipulated embryos. The
embryo is already a human being; (3) Cloning of a human
person is a technique which is devoid of a spiritual
dimension; (4) Cloning is against the dignity, uniqueness,
and originality of each person, and it reduces the person
to an object; (5) Cloning violates the principles of
equality and non discrimination, implicating the dominion
of one person, the scientist, over another, introducing a
selective-eugenic scheme; (6) Benefits cannot be used as a
reason to justify an inherently vitiated procedure.
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March 10, 2001
volume 12, no. 69
Pro Life News
www.DailyCatholic.org
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