Spanish Church Announces Campaign Against Stem Cell Research
Related News: Stem Cell NewsThe Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) stated this past Wednesday that it will start a campaign within churches throughout Spain with the goal to protest the governments role in stem cell research, calling it "science without a conscience."
The campaign is titled "We Were All Embryos," the campaign opposes any research that would use living or dead embryos. "It's not a mere mass of live cells, but the first state of the existence of a human being," said a statement from the conference, Spain's highest Catholic institution.
This latest announcement is a change to the the CEE's previous position on stem-cell research taken in July 2003. At that time, their stance was that they accepted using dead embryos for experimentation. Now, however, "we cannot kill them even if they are in a violent position nor can we turn them into human guinea pigs," said CEE spokesman Juan Antonio Martínez Camino.
"Where there is a live human body, even if for only a day, it's a person," Martínez Camino said.
The Church campaign comes after months of criticism of the government by the church, angered by recent laws to make divorce easier and make Spain only the third country to legalise gay marriage.
Other Catholic EU countries such as Italy and Ireland oppose stem cell research although the European Union funds it. Scientists say stem cell research could yield cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Stem cells are master cells which have the potential to grow into any human cell.
Posted on March 31, 2005 08:10 PM