"A monstrous act against human dignity": those were the words used by Archbishop of Glasgow Mario Conti in the pastoral letter which he sent to the 500 Catholic parishes in Scotland this week, as president of the Bioethics Committee. Thus he defined the creation of hybrid embryos, that is, with human and animal cells, for scientific purposes. As a matter of fact, after a long procedure, the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) finally authorized the possibility to create man-animal hybrid embryos for research. “The fact – wrote Msgr. Conti – that other countries drew a border line for human cloning did not prevent our government from proposing to go on, allowing scientists to carry out fertilization between species and the fusion of human and animal material into hybrid embryos. It is a monstrous act”. The Church expects respect for “the right and the duty” of the members of parliament “to vote these subjects by following their consciences”.
