A LEADING Australian bioethicist said a suggestion that aborted foetuses could be used to obtain embryonic stem cells was immoral.
Director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in Adelaide, Fr John Fleming, was responding to an announcement last Sunday by stem cell researcher, Professor Alan Trounson of Monash University in Melbourne, that for the first time in Australia aborted foetuses could be used in the culture of embryonic stem cells.
This work would go ahead if the creation of new stem cell lines was approved. Legislation is now before Federal Parliament.
Prof Trounson’s comments follow a Singaporean team’s demonstration that human embryonic stem cells can be grown on human tissue cultures. Previously this has been possible only on cultures made from the skin cells of foetal mice.
The Church has condemned embryonic stem cell research where it involves the destruction of human life.
