WASHINGTON, Jan 3, 2001 (LSN.ca) – A meeting between Catholic bishops and scientists which took place in September 1998 has resulted in a 19-page report, from the US bishops’ Committee on Science and Human Values which clarifies some of the issues around cloning. The report, sent to all bishops about four weeks ago, noted that “the cloning of animals and of human genes and somatic cells—except from embryos—for research purposes is morally neutral.” The Catholic News Service reported that while most scientists support cloning embryos for research, the bishops maintain, “because the embryo is a human being, research that harms or destroys it is impermissible.”
Delving deeper into the issues the report discussed “somatic cell nuclear transfer—SCNT—where the nucleus of an adult or fetal somatic cell is transferred to an egg whose own nucleus has been removed.” The process was regarded as impermissible by the bishops since it forms “a clone of the adult or fetus that possesses all the properties of an embryo created according to the order of nature.”
Amazingly the scientists would not even agree to a ban on reproductive cloning of humans, insisting that they “would like to leave the door open” for future work in this area – thus adding the “now” qualifier to the agreed upon statement: “cloning that brings a human being to birth should not be attempted now.”
The Vatican’s official newspaper also condemned outright the use of cloning human embryos even if only to be used for “therapeutic” purposes. Fr. Gino Concetti writes in the Dec. 30 edition “If it is not permissible to kill an adult in order to help another human being, how can one kill at the embryonic stage?”
See the Catholic News Service and Catholic World News coverage: https://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/20001228.htm https://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=10894