THE VATICAN:Embryonic stem-cell research, artificial insemination and the possibility of human cloning "shattered" human dignity, Pope Benedict said in Rome yesterday. Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent, reports.
The Catholic Church had a duty to defend the "great values at stake" in the field of bioethics.
In an address to members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he emphasised that the church was not against scientific progress but believed this had to take place in accordance with "ethical-moral principles". There should be total respect for the human being as person, "from conception until natural death", and respect for the natural transmission of life through sexual intercourse.
Practices such as the freezing of embryos, the suppression of embryos in multiple pregnancies, embryonic stem-cell research, the prospect of human cloning as well as artificial insemination outside the body had "shattered the barriers meant to protect human dignity".
"When human beings in the weakest and most defenceless state of their existence are selected, abandoned, killed or used as pure 'biological material', how can one deny that they are being treated not as 'someone' but as 'something'?" he asked. The church "appreciates and encourages" stem-cell research when it does not involve embryos or their destruction.
A meeting in Dublin on Wednesday night was told that trends in law and reproductive technologies were "redefining parenthood in ways that increasingly put the interests of adults before the needs of children."
Elizabeth Marquardt, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values in New York, said: "The growing emphasis is on meeting adults' rights to children rather than children's needs to know and be raised, whenever possible, by their mother and father."