Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Sydney (Agenzia Fides) - Christians in Australia are deeply disappointed after the House of Representatives passed a controversial cloning bill. After the approval by the Senate on 7 November (see Fides 9/11/2006), the Bill passed the House of Representatives is an conscience vote despite opposition from the new leader of the opposition Kevin Rudd, and other prominent Christian MPs with 82 votes to 62.
The legislation allows the cloning of embryos for research though somatic cell nuclear transfer, commonly called therapeutic cloning abolishing a ban voted four years ago.
In a rare vote of conscience in which the PMs were not bound to declare party membership, the House approved the bill presented by former health minister Kay Patterson, on the grounds that the potential of medical discoveries prevails over considerations of a ethical character.
Therapeutic cloning consists of removing the nucleus of a non fertilised human egg adding DNA to develop it in the laboratory. The law allows the use of egg cells of aborted female foetuses, but excludes the creation of human-animal hybrids. Abuse of the law will be punished by 15 years detention.
Christian MPs who voted no said the bill “goes beyond the ethic threshold and there is no knowing where it will lead. We are in an era which is going too far in the same of relativism. Certain principles can never be questioned”.
Christian leaders of all denominations in Australia say the law “violates the sacredness, value and dignity of human life”.
On the eve of the vote to deregulate bio-medical scientific research the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said “the country its moving swiftly towards the edge of a slippery slope” and he issued an appeal: “Ignorance and confusion abound on these matters, but principles of long-term importance are being broken and new moveable standards are being erected temporarily to be further ‘improved’ in the years ahead. Few Australians would know that the bill proposes to legalise the manufacture of cloned embryos with only one genetic parent; hybrid embryos with multiple genetic parents and embryos whose mother is an aborted girl foetus. Scientists propose to use the immature eggs (precursor cells) from aborted baby girls to create human embryos for experimentation and destruction””. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 7/12/2006 righe 28 parole 286)
