Australian Senate approves legislation to allow 'therapeutic' cloning of embryos

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Here is an editorial in The Australian on the matter. A tidbit:
This newspaper believes Australians are better off erring on the side of science than dwelling in the realms of fantasy. And we concur with Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone’s view that while a three-day-old 14-cell embryo is certainly human genetic material, "it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a human".
(Emphasis mine). I wonder how Mrs Vanstone defines what a human is…?
 
In a letter to The Australian, someone wrote:
An ovum with its nucleus removed and a somatic nucleus implanted cannot be legitimately described as an incipient human being because no one has shown it possible to generate humans in this way. So the ethical argument for prohibition is very weak.
What is the Church’s position on this, does anyone know?
 
While it is true all attempts with SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) have failed with humans it has been proved successful with animal models. [Nevertheless, Dr. Hwang of South Korea fraudulently claimed to have done just that] latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-stemcell28oct28,1,3113909.story

This is the same technique used to create Wilmut’s Dolly the sheep so theoretically it is possible given enough embryonic human children die in the process and enough women donate their **fresh **oocytes. After all, only 2% of cloned embryos in animals created by nuclear transfer have survived until birth. That apparently cloned human embryo could be cloned again by twinning or could be grown to the blastocyst stage (2-5 days old) to derive even more human embryonic stem cells. If this cloned child is allowed to develop long enough he/she would be suitable for organ harvesting. To date that is the only way researchers have succeeded in procuring organs. They have not been able to coax ESc’s into differentiating and actually growing entire organs suitable for transplant in cultures. (mouse, pig, cow) Although here again the media has no compunction misleading the public with hyped press releases. stemcellresearch.org/facts/FetusFarm.pdf

As for your question about the Church the support is for the ethical alternative which does not require the degradation and destruction of the most vulnerable. The Pope and/or the Pontifical Academy has spoken numerous times on this subject. lifeissues.net/writers/she/she_31churchreproduction.html
 
we concur with Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone’s view that while a three-day-old 14-cell embryo is certainly human genetic material, "it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a human".
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A sperm or an oocyte both possess “human genetic material”. While both contain human life and are parts of human individuals neither reaches the status of a human being. On the other hand, an embryo is a new genetically unique human being. It is a well established scientific fact, cleary defined in embryology textbooks. If anything, it necessitates a w i d e stretch of the imagination to pretend these tiny, vulnerable embryonic human children are not members of the human family. After all, they are neither crickets nor cockroaches nor would they be the center of such coveted research if they were other than human. Pseudoscience manipulates these facts for reasons of power. Political maneuvering, in a deliberate refusal to take responsibility to protect the youngest members of human society, arbitrarily shuffles time-lines and definitions to suggest a new human organism is formed only some considerable time after fertilization.

Clearly stated, fertilization begins with the penetration of a sperm into an oocyte and ends with the intermingling of maternal and paternal chromosomes into a unicellular embryo, ie., a zygote. Fertilization is the first critical landmark in human development. That is the defining moment when each one of us came into existence.
 
Pope Benedict in a recent symposium at Castel Gondolfo before hundreds of top doctors and researchers. "Stem Cells, What Future for Therapy?"
…The fact that you at this Congress have expressed your commitment and hope to achieve new therapeutic results from the use of cells of the adult body without recourse to the suppression of newly conceived human beings, and the fact that your work is being rewarded by results, are confirmation of the validity of the Church’s constant invitation to full respect for the human being from conception. The good of human beings should not only be sought in universally valid goals, but also in the methods used to achieve them.
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A good result can never justify intrinsically unlawful means. It is not only a matter of a healthy criterion for the use of limited financial resources, but also, and above all, of respect for the fundamental human rights in the area of scientific research itself. …
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vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060916_pav_en.html
 
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