Rome (Fides Service) - For the second year running the Franciscan Community in Assisi was host to a Seminar "Dialogue on Human Life". The Seminar, held on 30 January and organised by the ItalianiEuropei Foundation together with the Giulio Einaudi publishers, was open to politicians, scientists and researchers of various tendencies and religious beliefs (Christians, Jews and Muslims). The main themes of the debate, which lasted from 9am to 8pm, were cloning, production of human embryos for research, selling of human organs.
Today everywhere people are talking about cloning, in parliaments in committees, Some accept it, some say yes to therapeutic cloning but no to reproductive cloning. Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice-president of the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life is convinced that human beings simply cannot be made to measure. The Bishop rejects cloning for two reasons: it reproduces but it also kills and it triggers a marketing of human life. AP (Fides Service 30/1/2003)