Prelates of England and Wales Make Appeal to Members of Parliament

  LEEDS, England, NOV. 15, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- The Catholic Bishops of England

  and Wales have called on members of Parliament to reject a proposal to

  allow human cloning for research purposes.

  The bishops, meeting here this week, said in a statement: "We believe that

  research on cloned human embryos is both immoral and unnecessary. It is

  immoral because it involves the deliberate creation and destruction of new

  human lives for the sole purpose of extracting stem cells for research."

  "It strips an individual human life, in its earliest form, of all dignity,

  reducing it to no more than a commodity, a supply of disposable organic

  matter," the statement added. "It is also unnecessary because other avenues

  of stem cell research exist which may offer the same potential benefits

  without the ethical difficulties. ...

  "The Royal Society admitted this month that it is not known whether

  research on embryonic or adult stem cells will ultimately prove to be of

  greater value therapeutically."

  Earlier this week, a top U.S. reproductive ethics advisory group said that

  using current cloning technology to help infertile couples have babies

  would be premature and thus unethical, the Reuters news agency reported.

  The same technology that produced Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned,

  in 1997, might help some couples have babies, but it is too soon and too

  uncertain, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine's ethics committee

  said Monday, according to Reuters.

  "Any attempt to use somatic cell nuclear transfer to clone a human being at

  this time is scientifically premature and thus unethical,'' John Robertson,

  co-chair of the committee, said in a statement, according to Reuters.

  "However, related research efforts should be allowed to continue.''

  Somatic cell nuclear transfer involves scraping the nucleus out of an egg

  and replacing it with the nucleus, which carries most of the DNA, of

  another cell, Reuters said. The method can be used to clone an animal.

  But it can also be used to help an infertile woman have a child that is

  genetically hers, or to help an infertile man have a son that is a virtual

  identical twin of himself, the news agency said.

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