Pro-life group recruits bioethics heavyweight to help youth confront the culture of death London, : A leading UK pro-life group has recruited a bioethics heavyweight to help youth confront the culture of death.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has appointed Anthony McCarthy as its Education and Publications Manager, effective from 1 July 2011.
SPUC www.spuc.org.uk is the world''s oldest pro-life lobbying and educational organisation, founded in 1967.
He will oversee SPUC’s educational work at home and abroad, be responsible for SPUC’s educational publications and the SPUC website.
He has also been given the responsibility of managing, directing and developing SPUC’s outreach to secondary schools, universities and colleges and to young people in general across the country.
Given his background in research, bioethics and public relations, SPUC believes he is the ideal candidate to represent the organisation publicly and to write about bioethical and pro-life issues on behalf of SPUC for a range of publications.
Mr McCarthy was previously a Research Fellow of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, formerly the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics, a bioethical institute serving the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the eight years he spent with the Centre, Mr McCarthy contributed to submissions to the Government on major bioethical issues. He has written on such topics for national publications, including the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, and has argued the pro-life cause convincingly on Channel 4 News and the BBC. Mr McCarthy is the author of a book entitled "Cloning and Stem Cell Research" and has helped to edit a range of other publications in the field of bioethics. He has tutored in Philosophy at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham; Allen Hall seminary in Chelsea; Blackfriars, Oxford university; and Heythrop College, University of London. He has also given presentations at a European Parliament conference and to the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican. Before his involvement with the Linacre Centre, Mr McCarthy worked for an independent media monitoring firm serving a variety of financial institutions, and as a civil servant for the Cabinet Office and the Department of Trade and Industry. Mr McCarthy said: "I am delighted and honoured to be asked by SPUC to become their Education and Publications Manager. I have been writing and speaking on issues in sexual and reproductive ethics, as well as other life issues, for years and relish the opportunity to educate young people ready to cast off the tired nostrums of the sexual revolution and the various promoters of the culture of death. "With more and more people looking for ways to combat contemporary willingness to kill the innocent and the reluctance in certain quarters to face reality, SPUC’s work remains as important as ever. I look forward to joining colleagues in this work, and to using my background in ethics, research and communications in the hope of making the new post a crucial part of SPUC’s mission." John Smeaton, SPUC's director, said: "Anthony McCarthy's enormous expertise on sexual and reproductive ethics and the whole range of life issues will be invaluable in SPUC's outreach to young people. They are being targeted by the pro-abortion and birth control lobby as never before, not least at school. On the basis on sound reasoning, solid arguments and hard facts, we need to equip young people to resist the culture of death which surrounds them. "Anthony McCarthy is uniquely well-qualified to help SPUC fulfil that educational mission. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has been sending trained volunteer speakers to secondary schools for over four decades. SPUC's educational research trust produces 'How You Began', an educational set of realistic, anatomically-correct foetal models, which have been used in schools, medical schools and universities for over 20 years. They were designed and manufactured under the expert guidance of a team of leading foetal authorities including obstetricians and gynaecologists, pathologists and other experts in anatomy and embryology", concluded Mr Smeaton. For further information, please contact John Smeaton on (0)7785 325808 / (020) 7820 3128, or Simon Caldwell of St Gabriel News and Media (simon.caldwell@stgabrielnews.co.uk ) on (0)7708 119554.