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Leading stem cell scientists today criticised the leaders of the Catholic Church, after an seeing a statement prepared by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales that was read out in masses throughout the country last Sunday.
The statement invited parishioners to use the briefing to protest to their local MPs about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It led on the issue of hybrid embryos and provided the following description: From the Catholic Bishops’ statement: “Hybrids: The Bill will allow scientists to create embryos that are half human, half animal. For example from the egg of a woman and sperm from an animal, To do this would be a radical violation of human dignity.”
Professor Chris Shaw, Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, said:
“The Catholic Bishops’ statement on hybrids is not a radical violation of human dignity as they claim – it is a radical violation of the truth! The cloning technique removes all the animal DNA in the nucleus of an unfertilized egg and replaces it with an adult human cell that can then be reprogrammed to generate embryonic stem cells. It is a sperm free process.
“The Catholic Bishops are using scaremongering tactics in an attempt to block important medical research aimed at understanding and developing treatments for incurable diseases. Surveys of public opinion show that a significant majority support human embryonic stem cell research, even if it uses animal eggs to re-programme adult skin cells. These studies will be tightly regulated and only permitted if their purpose is to benefit humankind.”
Dr Lyle Armstrong, Newcastle University, said:
“We are very disturbed that Catholic bishops to claim that the bill will allow us to create ‘half human-half animal embryos’ since this is a gross and irresponsible misrepresentation of our position and our intentions in carrying out our work. The aim of our experiments is to discover ways to make stem cells for anyone that will be invaluable in treating human diseases not to give birth to some abnormal chimaera. Even if this were possible, it has no scientific or moral justification and is in any case strictly prohibited by the legislation upon which the bishops have felt the need to pass comment. We find their example of combining the egg of a woman with animal sperm even more distasteful, as we believe would anyone and we wish to make it absolutely clear that our work does not involve this.
“We find it both surprising and saddening that the Catholic Church, an organisation with many scientific and media aware personnel within its ranks should resort to such blatant inaccuracy to support its message in these matters.”
Dr Stephen Minger, Director, Stem Cell Biology Laboratory, King’s College London, said:
“This is yet another example where it is clear that the Catholic Church is misrepresenting science because it doesn’t understand the basic facts. The creation of interspecies nuclear transfer embryos DOES NOT involve the mixing of animal and human sperm and eggs and the attempted creation of a true animal-human hybrid. Rather it uses an animal egg which has had its own nucleus and DNA removed, thus rendering it devoid of an animal genetic identity, and replacement of the animal genetic material with a human cell and human DNA (not sperm!).
“As both the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the House of Common Select Committee on Science and Technology have concluded, such an embryo is categorically human. The Church should carefully review the science they are commenting on, and ensure that their official comments are accurate, before seriously misinforming their congregations. Like their previous comment which suggested that women donating eggs for interspecies nuclear transfer should be offered the opportunity to have these embryos implanted (note: the eggs themselves are not coming from women, they are obtained from livestock species; moreover the implantation of a nuclear transfer embryo is illegal as it constitutes reproductive cloning), this demonstrates that the Catholic Church is significantly ill-informed as to scientific issues related to this emerging area of science.”