“The Catholic Church considers in an unequivocal way that all human embryos have an inviolable dignity and holiness, however they came into the world and for whatever reason”: that is the blunt response of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales to the requested permission to clone human embryos presented on 16 June to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the agency that regulates artificial fertility in the UK. The application for permission to clone human embryos was presented by a group of scientists at the University of Newcastle; their aim is to generate cells that produce insulin for transplants in diabetic patients. “A newly cloned embryo declare the bishops in a press release is a new, distinct and individual being with the same inalienable rights as any other human being. Creating such an embryo for purposes of destructive research, as if the embryo were simply a biological product, would be quite wrong”. In Great Britain, cloning is prohibited by law, but so-called therapeutic cloning was legalized in 2002, though only by special licence issued by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). News of the requested permission has caused a furore in Great Britain. An anti-cloning pressure group, “Human Genetics Alert”, has written to the HFEA asking that the application be rejected. According to the scientists of the HGA, “this type of research is irresponsible, unethical, weak from a scientific point of view, unnecessary and justified only by political motivations”. The reply of the Authority is awaited in the next few days.
