“A setback for the protection of embryos”: that’s how COMECE (Commission of the episcopates of the European Community) comments today, in a statement signed by its President and General Secretary, respectively the Most Rev. Adrian Van Luyn (Bishop of Rotterdam) and Monsignor Noel Treanor, on the decision of the EU Competitiveness Council on research on embryonal stem cells, taken in Brussels yesterday, 24 July. COMECE calls "a swindle" the statement added by the European Commission, according to which "the Seventh Framework Programme for research shall not fund the destruction of human embryos, but solely the subsequent phases of research on embryonal stem cells". This funding, in the view of the European bishops, "risks representing, at the level of States, the preliminary stage for the destruction of human embryos". "The exploitation of human embryos for research purposes, i.e. their destruction or research on stem cells derived from these embryos, is unacceptable", underlines COMECE. "Nor is it really based on any scientific need, since adult stem cells and those derived from the umbilical cord present, according to the experts, an alternative with interesting and realistic therapeutic prospects". COMECE therefore appeals "to our European fellow-citizens, and especially to Catholics, to take to heart the anthropological dimension of this debate on human dignity", and "strive in the months ahead to open a debate at the level of the European institutions, within member states and in civil society" on research on stem cells, which will be re-discussed by the European Parliament in the autumn.
