News,

Yesterday's Sunday Times predicts that a government enquiry will recommend legalisation of therapeutic human cloning in the UK. Embryonic clones would be used to generate stem cells, and tissue from such cells might be introduced to a patient's body without the risk of rejection. Professor Jack Scarisbrick of the Life organisation commented: "embryonic stem cell removal involves the death of a young human being."


A couple are asking a court to let them choose the gender of their child. If Mr and Mrs Masterson get their way, male embryos may well be destroyed during in vitro fertilisation. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has described such procedures as leading to a further loss of dignity for vulnerable human life. [The Times, 13 March, 2000]


More than three quarters of a million prescriptions for so-called emergency contraception pills were issued in Britain in 1997. [Ms Yvette Cooper, public health minister, column 863W, Official Report, House of Commons, 10 March 2000]


Prayers offered during yesterday's ceremony of repentance in St Peter's basilica, Rome, included intercessions for "the unborn killed in their mother's womb or even exploited for experimental purposes by those who abuse the promise of biotechnology and distort the aims of science". The prayers were offered by Archbishop Nguyên Van Thuân of Vietnam, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. (Zenit, 12 March, 2000[


An anti-euthanasia parliamentary motion has been tabled by Dr Brian Iddon MP and colleagues and can be found at www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmedm/00310e01.htm


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