VATICAN CITY (CNS): The Vatican has condemned the first successful cloning of human embryos by US scientists, rejecting claims that the research produced simple cells and not human individuals.
Despite the scientists’ stated humanitarian aims, the research represents a new form of discrimination against defenceless people, the Vatican said in a statement last Monday.
Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced on November 25 in the online journal E-Biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine that they had cloned the first human embryo.
The researchers said they would use the technique, known as therapeutic cloning, to develop genetically compatible replacement cells for patients with illnesses like diabetes and Parkinson’s – not human clones.
But the Vatican, noting that the scientists referred to what they produced as an “early embryo”, rejected the claim that no human had been cloned.
It is “beyond doubt, as indicated by the researchers themselves, that here we find ourselves before human embryos and not cells, as some would have (people) believe”, the Vatican said.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington warned that the reported successful cloning of early-stage human embryos “has dangerous implications” of playing God and devaluing human life.
