By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Cardinal Justin Rigali of the U.S. Catholic bishop’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, reacting to the new guidelines for embryonic stem cell research, said the research is just “another way for some human beings to mistreat others for their own gain.”
“Suffering patients and their families deserve better through increased support for promising and ethically sound stem cell research and treatments that harm no one,” the Cardinal said in a written statement.
He correctly points out that the new guidelines, issued on April 18 by the National Institutes for Health, reflect the same policy that was approved but never implemented by the Clinton administration in 2000.
“However, the Clinton policy was limited to embryos that had been frozen, to ensure that parents had time to consider the decision to donate them for research; the new guidelines are broader in allowing destruction of newly created embryos that were never frozen, increasing the prospects for a rushed and biased consent process.”
Despite supporters’ constant claim that this agenda involves only embryos that “would otherwise be discarded,” the guidelines provide that the option of donating embryonic children for destructive research will be offered to parents alongside all other options, including those allowing the embryos to live, the Cardinal says.
“For the first time, federal tax dollars will be used to encourage destruction of living embryonic human beings for stem cell research – including human beings who otherwise would have survived and been born.”
While he makes note of the fact that the new guidelines don’t allow funding for research using embryos specifically created for experimentation – what is known as “fetal farming” – he is well aware of mounting congressional support for this unethical abuse of human life.
“ . . . (C)ongressional supporters of destructive human embryo research have already said they will pursue a more extreme policy,” the Cardinal writes. “The Catholic bishops of the United States will be writing to Congress and the Administration about the need to restore and maintain barriers against the mistreatment of human life in the name of science, and we urge other concerned citizens to do the same.”
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