AMERICA/BRAZIL - "It is contradictory that after all the progress made by science and psychology politicians have the nerve to claim that for the first 15 days of life the embryo is not yet a human person” says Bishop Odilo Pedro Scherer, auxiliary of São Paulo and secretary general of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference

Brasilia (Fides) - Bishop Odilo Pedro Scherer, auxiliary of São Paulo and secretary general of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference said recently to Fides that the imminent referendum in Italy is paradigmatic for similar decisions in other countries In fact - the Bishop said - “in Brazil the use of human embryos for scientific research was approved by parliament”. Bishop Scherer said that it is “contradictory that after all the progress made by science and psychology politicians have the nerve to claim that for the first 15 days of life the embryo is not yet a human person”. The Bishop said he had the impression that scientific and anthropological knowledge reach the opposite conclusion that “human life starts at the moment of fertilisation”, adding, “if the embryo is not a human being from the first instant it can never become one”. Therefore “the production of embryos for freezing and storing cannot fail to raise serious ethical and anthropological questions including heterologous IVF” and he added “no one and certainly not Christians can support legal measures which fail to respect human dignity and allow the human person to be used and manipulated". (R.Z.) (Agenzia Fides 8/6/2005, righe 16, parole 236)