Berlin, Germany, Jul 18, 2007 / 09:40 am
In response to a recent declaration by the National Ethics Council of Germany mentioning the possibility of changing the country’s laws on stem cells to allow scientists to harvest them from human embryos, the Bishops’ Conference of Germany said this week that the defense of the embryo as a human person “must not be forgotten.”
In a statement signed by conference secretary Father Hans Langendörfer, the German bishops warned against a weakening in the constitutional protection of the human embryo, which would result from the abolishing of a prohibition against using embryonic stem cells produced before January 1, 2002.
“There is no reason to abolish ethical decisions for the long term in our legal system,” the bishops said.
They noted that current German law does not allow the killing of human embryos and that it should remain that way in the future, “especially considering that the promotion of alternative ethical methods to find new possibilities for therapy and cures have not been completely developed.”
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