” “"Morally unacceptable". This is how the Presidency of the Italian Bishops Conference calls the decision taken by the Council of Ministers of the European Union, to fund, as part of the 7th Framework Program for Research, research into stem cells taken from embryos, "the production of which states the Italian Bishops Conference involves and will keep involving the destruction of human embryos". "The Italian Bishops Conference reads a note published today has always and often insisted that any research involving human embryos belongs to an unacceptable anthropological view, which regards human life not as an end, but as a means to achieve different, although noble, purposes, such as the treatment of diseases and scientific knowledge. Science must serve man, not use man, especially when man is in its most fragile condition, an embryo in the very first days of its life". Hence the Italian Bishops’ appeal "to the Italian politicians and to all those who can still stop this ethical drift" and to the EU, that "it by no means smooth the way, with its funds, to such a harmful attack against the dignity of man which fails the fundamental value of human life, without which any other personal and social value loses substance. Benedict XVI concludes the Italian Bishops Conference reminded us that the "protection of life at all its stages, from the first moment of conception to its natural end", is "a non negotiable principle”.” “
