Posted on 07/20/2007 3:06:21 AM PDT by Gamecock
The Roman Catholic Church has called for women to be allowed to give birth to human-animal hybrids created in the laboratory.
Embryos injected with animal cells, or chimeras, should be treated as human beings where they have a preponderance of human genes, the bishops say in a sumbission to a Government committee.
And there should be no ban on implanting such hybrid embryos in the womb of the woman who supplied the original egg, they say in their submission on the Draft Tissue and Embryos Bill.
“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so,” the bishops say.
The Bill proposes overhauling the regulation for embryo research and fertility treatment.
At present it is illegal in Britain to create embryos using a mix of human and animal genetic material, but the government is proposing to allow scientists to create human-animal embryos for research as long as they are destroyed within two weeks.
In their submission, the bishops say that most of the procedures covered by the bill should not be licensed under any circumstances. They argue that this is because they violate human rights.
Under the proposed legislation, scientists would be allowed in principle to produce “cytoplasmic” hybrid embryos that are 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal.
It would also give permission for human embryos to be altered by the introduction of animal DNA and would allow human-animal “chimeras” - human embryos that have been physically mixed with one or more animal cells.
In all cases it would be illegal for embryos to grow for more than 14 days - beyond the size of a pinhead - or be implanted into a womb.
The Bill would ban the creation of “true hybrids” by fusing the egg and sperm of humans and animals.
In a letter sent in with the submission, the Most Rev Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, says the Catholic Church was opposed in principle to “destructive experimentation” on human embryos.
The government initially proposed to ban the creation of chimeras but changed its mind earlier this year under pressure from the scientific community.
The Pope today backed the use of adult stem cell research distinguishing it from the manipulation of stem cells from human embryos, which the Roman Catholic Church condemns.
Speaking at the end of his weekly general audience, the Roman Catholic leader referred to the use of adult stem cells to treat heart problems, being discussed at a global conference in Rome. “On this matter the position of the Church, supported by reason and by science, is clear,” he said, “Scientific research must be encouraged and promoted, so long as it does not harm other human beings, whose dignity is inviolable from the very first stages of existence.”
Paging Dr Mengele; Please come to your lab.
Gee, it makes perfect sense to me. But then again I have been told that I am often incoherent.
Jerry Seinfeld: . Hospital receives grant to conduct DNA research. Government funds genetic research at area hospital... Yeah, so?
Cosmo Kramer: Pigman, baby. Pigman.
Elaine Benes: Oh, if I hear about this pigman one more time...
Cosmo Kramer: I’m tellin ya the pigman is alive. The governments been experimenting with pigmen since the fifties.
That LOOKS like my typing, but I'm almost certain I did not write this article ...
Sumbission? This is a serious article on a serious web site? Really?
Sum bission indeed! Sum KIND of bission, I tell you what!
This article misses a significant point; namely that creating human embryos outside of the womb is immoral anyways. That embryos created despite that fact have dignity and a right to life is something that the Catholic Church has been saying for years.
Well this issue is certainly hugh.
Is that your opinion or the RCC?
If it's the RCC can you provide a reference?
If you're looking for a reference, look at Evangelium Vitae (these excerpts are from sections 14 and 63):
14. The various techniques of artificial reproduction, which would seem to be at the service of life and which are frequently used with this intention, actually open the door to new threats against life. Apart from the fact that they are morally unacceptable, since they separate procreation from the fully human context of the conjugal act, 14 these techniques have a high rate of failure: not just failure in relation to fertilization but with regard to the subsequent development of the embryo, which is exposed to the risk of death, generally within a very short space of time. Furthermore, the number of embryos produced is often greater than that needed for implantation in the woman's womb, and these so-called "spare embryos" are then destroyed or used for research which, under the pretext of scientific or medical progress, in fact reduces human life to the level of simple "biological material" to be freely disposed of.
<...>
63. This evaluation of the morality of abortion is to be applied also to the recent forms of intervention on human embryos which, although carried out for purposes legitimate in themselves, inevitably involve the killing of those embryos. This is the case with experimentation on embryos, which is becoming increasingly widespread in the field of biomedical research and is legally permitted in some countries. Although "one must uphold as licit procedures carried out on the human embryo which respect the life and integrity of the embryo and do not involve disproportionate risks for it, but rather are directed to its healing, the improvement of its condition of health, or its individual survival",74 it must nonetheless be stated that the use of human embryos or fetuses as an object of experimentation constitutes a crime against their dignity as human beings who have a right to the same respect owed to a child once born, just as to every person. 75
This moral condemnation also regards procedures that exploit living human embryos and fetuses-sometimes specifically "produced" for this purpose by in vitro fertilization-either to be used as "biological material" or as providers of organs or tissue for transplants in the treatment of certain diseases. The killing of innocent human creatures, even if carried out to help others, constitutes an absolutely unacceptable act.
Also look at Pope John Paul II's series of talks on the Theology of the Body; general principles that led up to both of those documents are explained inn the encyclical Humanae Vitae.
This is perfectly consistent with the Church's stance concerning IVF, as well as the "snowflake babies" that result.
The article is essentially bogus. It’s so misleading in its title that the rest of it is rendered useless.
Gamecock either fell for it, or knowing posted it here to mislead people.
The Catholic Church (and I mean the Catholic Church and not just some English bishops) has already denounced all manner of bizarre medical experiments.
Archbishop Peter Smith mentioned exactly that in the first sentence of the second paragraph of the cover letter:
“Given the nature of the embryo as an early human life, and thus a human moral subject, we remain opposed in principle to destructive experimentation on human embryos.”
Now, in the very second paragraph of the joint document itself the Catholic bishops said:
“2.1 We are opposed in principle to many of the procedures covered by the Draft Bill: procedures which we believe violate human rights, and thus should not be licensed under any circumstances.”
Then they go on to say:
4.1 With many others, we are very disturbed by the proposed expansion of conditions under which embryo research may be performed. In particular, it is proposed to allow for the permission of research on human embryos - or what may be human embryos - created by the combination of human and animal material. In other cases, there may be a real risk of creating a genuine, though damaged human embryo, and the reasons against such experiments will be consequently even more serious. If an embryo is conceived with a single animal gene, or even if a human nucleus is placed in an animal ovum, this may be compatible with the presence of a genuine human embryo following the procedure. Such an embryo, in the latter case, would be a clone deprived of all human parents, and would thus be still further alienated from any possibility of parental protection.
4.2 We oppose the exclusion of interspecies embryos from the definition of embryo in the Act. At very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly. In particular, it should not be a crime to transfer them, or other human embryos, to the body of the woman providing the ovum, in cases where a human ovum has been used to create them. Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so.
Thus, what the Catholic bishops did was absolutely moral: 1) they opposed all manner of bizarre experimentation. 2) they supported the human rights of human-animal hybrids if they be created so that they would not be used for further experimentation like something out of an old science fiction/horror film.
Case closed.
You wrote:
“Google News the topic yourself.”
I did. That’s exactly how I found the documents that proved the article title was misleading to say the least. I found it at a Catholic website for the Church in Britain and Wales.
“This is not some some stray article but seems of interest overseas (where I live) than you think.”
No, it’s really a stray article. After all, it’s already THREE WEEKS OLD. And you clearly didn’t do any research on the topic before posting it.
Did so.
There’s gonna be some series bission and moaning, that’s fer shur.
You wrote:
“Did so.”
Apparently not. Why then post an article that is so clearly misleading when the truth was so easily found that it took me all of two or three minutes?
The headline of the article is misleading. The Church condemns experimentation on human embryos, including the creation of human-animal hybrids. What these Catholics bishops in England are saying is that women who want to keep such embryos, to have them implanted in their wombs and carried to term, should be permitted to do so. Apparently, the legislation in question would prohibit this. However, this in no way implies that the Church now approves embryo experimentation or in vitro fertilization. This is a classic example of the press taking something that a bishop says out of context and thereby misinforming the public.
Well here is another one just web published and posted for your perusal.
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