RENEWED VATICAN OPPOSITION TO EMBRYO RESEARCH

VATICAN, Apr. 10, 01 (CWNews.com) – Reacting to a proposal from Italy’s health minister, the vice-president of the Pontifical Academy for Life has voiced opposition to plans for experimentation on frozen human embryos.

Bishop Elio Sgreccia, writing in L’Osservatore Romano, rejected a proposal by Umberto Veronese to conduct research on 250 embryos which have been abandoned in fertility clinics. The government minister had suggested that these "orphan" embryos were bound for destruction in any case, and could be used for scientific purposes.

Bishop Sgreccia, however, said that the use of human embryos for research purposes is inherently immoral. He added that the existence of 24,0000 frozen embryos in Italy alone—"a veritable army of human beings in baths of liquid nitrogen"—was itself a scandal "too great to avoid causing ethical embarrassment."

The freezing of a human being, the bishop said, "is a very grave act of violence." He called for an end to the freezing of human embryos, and for efforts to find alternatives to artificial fertilization, so as "to avoid the accumulation of frozen embryos."

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