CLAIMS that scientists could create embryos that had no potential for growing into a human being were designed to mislead the public, Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations spokeswoman Dr Donna Purcell said.
A California biotechnology company announced in late August that it had developed a way of creating stem cells without destroying human embryos, billing it as a potential solution to a contentious political and ethical debate.
“A human embryo is already a human being and the reason an embryo created for research cannot develop into a baby is that it is destroyed in order to obtain its cells,” Dr Purcell said.
She said another claim was that the proposition that because cloning did not involve fertilisation by sperm the resulting entity would somehow not be an embryo.
At the Vatican, Pontifical Academy for Life president Bishop Elio Sgreccia said the new technique did not remove ethical objections and may increase them.
He told Vatican Radio on August 26 that removal of the single cell may damage the embryo.
A pro-life official of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops described the alleged breakthrough as “a sham”.
“They didn’t do anything like what the headlines are saying they did,” Bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities deputy director Richard Doerflinger said in an August 24 interview with Catholic News Service.
