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Vatican slams human embryo cloning

Vatican's Sgrecia:
Vatican's Sgrecia: "Not a victory but a crime twice over"

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South Korean researchers report they have cloned human embryos and extracted stem cells. CNN's Sohn Jie-ae has more.
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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- Catholic officials have condemned the recent cloning of human embryos, with Pope John Paul's bioethics advisor calling it a repeat of what the Nazis tried to do in World War Two concentration camps.

"You can't kill human life in the hopes of finding medicines to save other lives," said Monsignor Elio Sgrecia, vice president of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, Friday.

"That would be a repeat of what the Nazis did in the concentration camps," Sgrecia, who is close to the pope, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"The scientists are saying: 'First I'll clone you. Then I'll kill you.' This is not a victory but it is stepping on human life twice," he said.

South Korean scientists announced this week they had cloned several human embryos and extracted stem cells from one.

They were the first researchers to prove they had cloned a human embryo and said they did it not to make a baby but for the purposes of therapeutic cloning.

Sgrecia said: "This is not a victory for humanity but a crime twice over."

The Catholic Church condemns all forms of research on embryos that leads to their destruction.

Stem cells, which can be taken from embryos, are capable of developing into cell types that make up the body. Scientists believe they can lead to cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, spinal cord injuries and cancer.

Stem cells, a kind of master cell, are found throughout the body but some scientists say adult stem cells are difficult to pinpoint and hard to work with.

Sgrecia, who also heads an ethics centre at a leading Catholic medical school in Rome, said stem cells taken from umbilical cords or adults should be used for research instead because the process does not involve the destruction of life.

"There is no proof that stem cells taken from embryos are better for cures than those taken from adults," he said.

"Some scientists are filling people with false hopes while at the same time committing crimes because creating an embryo to suppress it is a technological but inhuman game," he said.

When the pope met U.S. President George W. Bush in 2001 he told Bush, who was then formulating his position on the issue, that creating embyros destined for destruction was evil.

Bush opposes all forms of cloning and his administration has pressed for bans in Congress and in the United Nations, without success. Supporters of therapeutic cloning say the battle has left the entire field unregulated and allowed renegade scientists a legal opening to try to clone a human baby.

Sgrecia warned of a brave new world where "embryonic life is bought and sold as if in commerce."

Echoing his opinion on Friday was a front-page editorial in Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the influential Italian bishops conference.

It condemned what it called "science without limits" and called embryo cloning a "horrendous assembly line."

In France, the Catholic daily La Croix said in a front-page editorial the South Korean announcement requires a quick response before pressure grows to employ it widely.

It said this work "shows that the idea of reimplanting a cloned embryo to carry a pregnancy to term is no longer unrealistic."



Copyright 2004 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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