In the wake of the National Institutes of Health issuing draft guidelines for embryonic stem cell research, Cardinal Justin Rigali, Chairman of the U.S. Bishops Committee on Pro-life Activities, issued a strong critique opposing the proposed rules, and urged U.S. Catholics to register their concerns, as well:
"In most respects these draft guidelines reflect the policy approved but never implemented by the Clinton administration in 2000. However, the Clinton policy was limited to embryos that had been frozen, to ensure that parents had time to consider the decision to donate them for research; the new guidelines are broader in allowing destruction of newly created embryos that were never frozen, increasing the prospects for a rushed and biased consent process.
"Despite supporters’ constant claim that this agenda involves only embryos that “would otherwise be discarded,” the guidelines provide that the option of donating embryonic children for destructive research will be offered to parents alongside all other options, including those allowing the embryos to live. For the first time, federal tax dollars will be used to encourage destruction of living embryonic human beings for stem cell research – including human beings who otherwise would have survived and been born.
"It is noteworthy that, despite calls for an even broader policy by some in Congress and the research community, the draft guidelines do not allow federally funded stem cell research using embryos specially created for research purposes by in vitro fertilization or cloning. We can hope that the NIH and Congress will continue to respect this ethical norm, and will realize that the alleged “need” for violating it is more implausible than ever due to advances in reprogramming adult cells to act like embryonic stem cells. However, congressional supporters of destructive human embryo research have already said they will pursue a more extreme policy. The Catholic bishops of the United States will be writing to Congress and the Administration about the need to restore and maintain barriers against the mistreatment of human life in the name of science, and we urge other concerned citizens to do the same."
Cardinal Rigali's statement did not explicitly address the fear of many pro-life groups: the NIH guidelines amount to a "bait and switch" strategy that will ultimately result in NIH approval of practices that incorporate the creation and destruction of human embryos solely for research purposes or that employ cloned human embryos.
Postscript: As the White House passes on responsibility to NIH for dealing with a thorny ethical issue, everybody--in and out of the government--is supposedly united in their opposition to the 'unsafe' practice of bringing cloned human beings to term. Really? Bioethics watchdog (the genuine article, not a 'facilitator') Wesley Smith begs to differ. He comments in First Things on an unfolding controversy that supposedly proves no body wants a cloned living baby: "As usual, their “ethical” opposition to human cloning has virtually nothing to do with the inherent wrongness of human cloning, but merely reflect safety concerns."
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