"Therapeutic babies" and eugenics are "a hateful and ethically unacceptable practice": it was repeated today by the Swiss Bishops, through their Bioethics Commission, on recalling the case of the first Swiss "therapeutic baby", a little girl born in January 2005 in a laboratory in Brussels to donate her spinal marrow to her sick 6-year-old brother. "While it is not fair to criticise the subjective intention of the parents who suffered specify the Swiss Bishops and while we rejoice for the child’s recovery, the fact remains that the technique of therapeutic babies is a disturbing form of eugenics". The Bishops trace the reasons back to the production of 20 or 30 human embryos that will be destroyed "as cheap stuff" after finding one single embryo compatible with the sick person. "The noble purpose of treating the patient they highlight, does not justify the killing of the embryos, who are human individuals". (to be continued)
