Human-animal hybrid embryos should be legal says Catholic Church? Thoughts?

Question

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1868868/posts

And there should be no ban on implanting such hybrid embryos in the womb of the woman who supplied the original egg, they say in their submission on the Draft Tissue and Embryos Bill.

“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so,” the bishops say.

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA06L21
The changes, supposedly to square the law with the science, allow things most Britons consider abhorrent, including licenses for the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos for experiments.

Do we need to add human infants to the list?
http://www.uncaged.co.uk/
http://www.ehd.org/science_imagegal_4.php

http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=21240

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/britain-to-allow-hybrid-embryo-plan/2007/09/04/1188783234382.html

http://kutv.com/homepage/topstories_story_137111742.html

Britain approves human-animal hybrid embryos
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/031722.html

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0011.html

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/05_Genetic/050126.animal-human.html

http://www.nochimera.com/chimera_ethics.html

Answer 1

If God doesn't smite us for this one I'm going to ask Him why?
It's not bad enough these heartless people want to create life just to murder it in experimentation, but now they want to mix animals in. What have the poor animals done to be dishonored by mankind like this. What has happened to God in our Society that we watch while this abomination takes place and say nothing.
The Catholics are wrong in their assumption that it is going to happen anyway might as well reap the benefits stand. This is your Holiest guy? Shame.

Answer 2

I read the article.

The article proposed by the Catholic officials in no way promotes making human-animal chimeras or laboratory bestiality. I think you misunderstood the point of the Church's stand on the topic.

The article you linked was a human-rights push for the products of such experimentation: the already-living human/animal hybrid, whose gene sequence is now 99% human, and 1% animal. This experiment is already going on in Great Britian. According to British law, such a hybrid cannot be allowed to live past 14 days, nor ever placed within a womb, nor brought to birth.

However, cellular division has already begun, and the embryo is growing. At roughly 14 days, the embryo has reached the blastocyst stage, and is ready to implant itself into its (supposedly waiting) mother's womb. Cell specialization has succeeded in creating a cell mass called a "zygoblast" (chock full of stem cells, which will become the baby) and the "trophoblast", which will become the amniotic sac and placenta.

It would seem that the Church is concerned that a scientist, by injecting animal DNA into a human embryo, is trying to bypass human embryonic stem-cell harvesting laws by creating a "non-human" source. After all, if the "embryo" in question isn't 100% human, then THE CHILD HAS NO RIGHTS and can be harvested at will.

Now, IF a person can be declared a NON-HUMAN simply by containing a bit of animal DNA, then we have a dangerous legal precedent being set. If we can declare someone a "non-person" for having 1% animal DNA, what can we say about someone with animal-tissue transplants? Are THEY still fully human? What if the cellular components are determined by a blood test, and protiens from, say, a cow or pig are detected in that person's blood. Is THAT person still a person?

Hopefully you see where this is going.

The Church is not giving a blanket endorsement on such ghastly experimentation. Rather, she is trying to protect the rights of yet another victim, this one created in a lab.

Answer 3

I think you misssed this part of the article:

In their submission, the bishops say that most of the procedures covered by the bill should not be licensed under any circumstances. They argue that this is because they violate human rights.

Under the proposed legislation, scientists would be allowed in principle to produce “cytoplasmic” hybrid embryos that are 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal.

In a letter sent in with the submission, the Most Rev Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, says the Catholic Church was opposed in principle to “destructive experimentation” on human embryos.

Answer 4

I totally agree with Rebecca's point (made above). Whoever wrote the headlined obviously did not read the article! Great Britain wants to make the creation of hybrid embryos legal - not the Catholic Church!

The Bishops are simply responding to this move by British scientists.

The Catholic Church is opposed in principle to “destructive experimentation” on human embryos. That includes the creation of these "chimeras."

The point of the Bishops letter is that if scientists DO persist in this destructive experimentation, then the human element in these embryos must be protected.

As a faithful Catholic, I agree wholeheartedly with their stance on the sanctity of life.

Answer 5

no where in the article does it say that the Catholic Church says that these chimerae should be legal. The Church is responding to the fact that they are NOW legal in the UK as it continues its descent into chaos and anarchy. (this is what the first sentence means: "The Roman Catholic Church has called for women to be allowed to give birth to human-animal hybrids created in the laboratory" means that IF or WHEN these hybrids are created, women should be allowed etc) The Bishops are saying, as the article indicates, that IF these embryos are created, they should be treated with at least a modicum of human respect.

Answer 6

The fact that anyone would even think of mixing humans with animals is disgusting, at best. I believe that the church's position, at least from what I was able to decipher, is that the mother (the woman whose egg is used) should be allowed to keep the product of said experiments. Meaning, she has the right to give it life.

I'm truly sickened at what we've come to and wonder how much further we will be allowed to proceed before true hell breaks out.

Even if I were a non-believer, which I'm far from, I can't imagine what benefit I would find in screwing around with biology, let alone to this degree.

Answer 7

I don't buy it. The Catholic Church is against ANYTHING they deem to be "unnatural." And that would include human-animal hybrids. Its a disgusting thought,anyhow,and I can't imagine any woman in her right mind taking part in such an experiment. Or a scientist conducting such an experiment, unless his name was Frankenstein.

Answer 8

The Catholic church is on record as being against these type of weird, inhuman experiments, but it demands that any human offspring ... even those that are partially human ... be afforded the same human rights that belong to all men.

I have yet to see a single UK newspaper or TV station that has ever properly quoted the Catholic church on anything.

Their record is still intact.

Answer 9

What will the Catholic Church or any church for that matter, say if human beings give birth to kitten? Not human-cat hybrid but cat? What would they say if human beings give birth to live fish? Not human-fish hybrid but fish? Live fish! The Holy Spirit revealed these to us and they will happen. What we think is impossible, unnatural, unbelievable and scary will become reality. Watch out for these. I firmly believe that they will happen, most likely during our lifetime. He also mentioned the birth of three-eyed babies. Don’t be scared when you hear these happen. They are warning signs that God, the true God, really exist.

These are not human-animal hybrid embryos but true-to-type—cat, fish, human being.

Answer 10

this is right up there with crimes against humanity.

the addition of animal genes into human is not to improve the race but to make slaves of men

I had heard about 20 years ago that research was being done to create people with chlorophyll so that they would drink a mineral drink (a type of Gatorade if you will) and in the presence of sunlight they would make their own food. The human body has cooling mechanisms that would prevent them from not being denied food in the workplace provided they have light. To shut them down, deny them light and/or food

if the catholic church has indeed approved this, then i think the LORD God is soon going to destroy it, along with a lot of people.

in genesis chapter 6, we read about the great flood. the nephilium were beginning to populate the earth and flood the human blood line with some form of something God did not approve of, he killed them all the the great flood.

the catholic church knowning this has a total disregard for the bible, but they don't use it anyway, so who really cares.

Answer 11

It additionally pronounced in case you seem under different components - "The bishops, who have faith that existence starts off at concept, pronounced that they adversarial the creation of any embryo completely for examine, yet they have been additionally annoying to decrease the destruction of such existence as quickly because it have been introduced into life. " And "The Catholic bishops pronounced that many of the innovations lined by the bill “should not be authorized under any situations”, chiefly on the grounds that they violate human rights." that is spectacular how each physique needs to curve the Catholic church into something morbid and morally incorrect...