Stem Cells

I was listening to a broadcast yesterday in which the protagonist was bemoaning the fact that the Christian Right is against stem cell research, which is here to stay and certainly will not go away despite opinions to the contrary!

Not true at all. The Church is not against research, but is against its misuse. The Church is always pro-life and condemns embryonic step cell research. As a matter of fact stem cell research has already contributed to marvelous cures, which embryonic research has not surpassed. No need to kill life, when cures are possible with other stem cells.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, said during a conference co-sponsored by the Vatican dicastery and the Acton Institute, titled "Health, Technology and Common Good:

"The ultimate criterion in the use of all technologies must be the good of man.

"In discussing the sciences of life and reflecting on the experimental sciences that manipulate life, one wonders about correct human behavior in relation to human life, deficiency in human life, increase in human life, improvement in human life, procedures to be followed to obtain this improvement and deviations to be avoided.

"Thus, technology left to itself can build or destroy man; technology in itself is blind, even if it appears to be the most advanced and the most marvelous. In itself, biotechnology is blind and ambivalent."