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EU Embryo Stem Cell Research a "macabre product of a twisted sense of progress": Vatican Newspaper

Vatican condemns EU's decision to fund embryo research

By Terry Vanderheyden

VATICAN CITY, July 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Vatican officials have condemned approval by the European Union to expand funding for destructive human embryonic stem cell research.

Within days of a decision by US President George W. Bush to veto funding of the practice in America, the EU voted Monday to continue backing the experimentation on embryonic humans. The measure allocates a further €50.5 million over a six-year period.

After a coalition of eight EU member countries led by Germany expressed apprehension last week, the proposal was amended to restrict funds to research that did not involve the direct killing of embryos. Italy and Germany’s reversals Monday swung the vote, granting majority approval to the plan. Austria, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland and Slovakia rejected the proposal.

The Vatican's condemnation stems from that fact that extracting a stem cell implies killing the embryo it is derived from; thus any embryonic stem cell research involves killing – whether it is being directly paid for or not. Thus the amendment that prevents funding of the direct killing of human embryos means only that a private supplier must do the killing for any EU-sponsored research.

President of the Vatican Pontifical Academy for Life, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, explained that by allowing EU-funded researchers to purchase stem cell lines from embryos killed by independent contractors, “a coincidence of interests is established between those who sell and prepare the cellular lines and those who buy them,” according to a Zenit report. “From the ethical point of view, this coincidence of interest implies a complicity, a collaboration, as the moralists say, which does not exempt from participation in the responsibility of those who, in the first place, have produced and sectioned the embryos, and commercialized their cells.”

“It is a grave issue that Europe, in a Parliament of this representation, does not recognize this primary right, the first of all others, the right to life,” the bishop added, “as it is also grave that the legislation authorizes the manipulation of the human being in virtue of the principle: ‘I kill to get advantages for others.’”

In a statement issued Wednesday by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE), they restated their objection to “EU funding of research which implies directly or indirectly the destruction of human embryos. In this respect, it recalls the statement of the Executive Committee of COMECE, May 31, 2006: ‘Treating the human embryo as an object for research is not compatible with human dignity.’”

L’Osservatorio Romano, the Vatican daily newspaper, meanwhile denounced the move. Columnist Marco Bellizi described the EU decision as the “macabre product of a twisted sense of progress” in his column Tuesday.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Germany Drops Opposition to EU Embryo Research Funding
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06072407.html

Polish Parliament Adopts Resolution against Human Embryonic Research
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06072402.html

See Zenit coverage:
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=93166

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