EUROPE/SPAIN - Catholic Bishops warn that proposed Bill on biomedical research “fails to guarantee proper protection of life opening the door to legal practice of more abuses against the dignity of the human person”

Madrid (Agenzia Fides) - “The Proposed Law On Bio-Medical Research Fails To Protect Life And Allows Human Cloning” is the title of a statement issued by the Standing Committee of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Spain. The Bishops say that unless the proposed law on biomedical research published on 22 September in the official parliamentary bulletin, “is thoroughly amended by parliament it will not guarantee proper protection of life and will open the door to legal practice of new abuses against the dignity of the human person".
First of all the Bill "determines a moment - the 14th day - when the ‘product’ of fertilisation can be considered an ‘embryo’. It establishes that until the 14th day “the ‘pre-embryo’ does not deserve the protection due to the life of a human person and can be considered an object which can be used for research". This principle has no scientific or anthropological foundation whatsoever and the Spanish Bishops are concerned that the Bill "allows research on living human embryos which have lost the capacity for development".
The Bishops’ Statement explains that if on the one hand the law "prohibits the creation of embryos for research", on the other it "authorises so-called activation of eggs for nuclear transferral". The purpose of this is to obtain stem cells to serve as material for investigation, in other words "the Bill allows the production of cloned embryos to obtain from them testing material while banning at the same time, the constitution of embryos for testing". This apparent contradiction is solved with a verbal pretence: "the law avoids calling cloned embryos, ‘cloned embryos’ and thus allows legal so-called therapeutic cloning".
The Bishops of Spain hope “the good sense of legislators will prevail over economic and ideological pressure” and close their statement urging the "Catholic community to continue to announce with vigour the Gospel of life. It is the Gospel which enables us to love unconditionally and to judge with lucidity". (RG) (Agenzia Fides 25/10/2006; righe 23, parole 339)