Cardinal Pell Cautions Howard And Beazley On Human Cloning

By Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese

28/11/2006

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has warned that cloning human embryos for research will produce two classes of people – those created to live and those created to be killed.

Cardinal Pell has written to Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley ahead of this week’s debate on a private member’s bill designed to allow human embryos to be created for research purposes.

“Just four years ago, Australia’s Federal and State parliaments voted to ban all forms of human cloning,” Cardinal Pell said.

“And 18 months ago, Australia supported the United Nation’s Declaration on Human Cloning, which called on member states to prohibit all human cloning as it was incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.

“Yet we now face a situation in Australia where the Federal Parliament may vote to allow the creation of two classes of human beings – those intended to live and those marked for death.

“This is an ominous marker event for the future.

“It’s also the thin end of the wedge; if Parliament allows human embryos to be cloned for experiments now, it will be hard-pressed to resist identical requests for access to older embryos – cloned or otherwise – next time, and for cloned foetuses.

“Human embryonic stem cell research is leading us down a blind alley.”

Cardinal Pell said current evidence suggested researchers themselves were also sceptical of the health benefits that are possible.

“There were already more than 100,000 embryos in storage at the end of 2003, but only 178 had been used as of March this year.

“Why is there this massive gap between rhetoric and reality?

“And why is it that nine research licences have been issued under the current regulatory regime, but only one relates to research into a particular medical condition? Why were the other licences issued?

“The bill before Parliament proposes that we reject the fundamental principle of medical research ethics - primum non nocere, ‘first, do no harm’ - and that we condone the manufacture of laboratory human beings for destructive experiments.”

In his letter, Cardinal Pell also raised the following concerns:

• that the current bill still allows the creation of hybrid embryos by the fertilisation of an animal egg by human sperm
• that embryonic stem cell research will be expanded while eminent  medical researchers concede we are not at the stage needed to start clinical trials, and
• that significant sums of money have already been spent on such research, yet no health benefits at all have been produced or are foreseeable.

“Adult stem cell research has been much more productive,” he said.

“We all want cures for of all manner of human conditions, but this Bill has many flaws.

“Its fundamental direction is alarming and misleading, and its deference to human life is limited and unprincipled.

“It should be rejected.”

The Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, is due to be debated in the House of Representatives on Thursday.