The Vatican condemned on Friday plans by a team of British scientists to create a human embryo using genetic material from two women, on the grouds the experiment violated “three prohibitions”.
“This is a real experiment whose success remains to be proved, but which, from the moral point of view, violates at least three prohibitions”, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told Vatican radio.
“A real clone will be produced, the embryo from which the nucleus is taken is destroyed and they then create a new embryo implanted in a woman who becomes a substitute mother.
“All this constitutes a string of violations that is morally reprehensible, and not only from the Catholic point of view,” Sgreccia said.
A team of scientists at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom were granted government approval on Thursday to create a human embryo using genetic material from two women, raising the future prospect of babies with a pair of mothers.
The scientists will transfer the pro-nuclei — the components of a human embryo nucleus — made by one man and woman into an unfertilised egg from another woman.
This technique is intended to help prevent mothers from passing on genetic disorders to their unborn babies, caused by DNA outside the nucleus of a cell, in the mitochondria.
The human trial will not see any eggs allowed to develop into babies, but the research nonetheless remains controversial. – AFP