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DefCon: The Campaign To Defend the Constitution
Fighting for Separation of Church and State
DefCon is an online grassroots movement combating the growing power of the religious right. We will fight for the separation of church and state, individual freedom, scientific progress, pluralism, and tolerance while respecting people of faith and their right to express their beliefs
2006
JULY
| Excommunicating stem cell researchers |
Cardinal Trujillo invoked cataclysmic language, saying Spain, Belgium, Holland, France and other stem-cell research friendly countries have “thrown out the fundamental laws of nature.”
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo
Cardinal calls for stem cell sanctions
Excommunication urged for scientists
By Elisabeth Rosenthal, International Herald Tribune
July 1, 2006 ROME -- Scientists who engage in stem-cell research using human embryos should be excommunicated from the Catholic Church, a senior Vatican official said, raising the likelihood that the church is poised to take a more aggressive stance on this controversial issue. In an interview with the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana published Thursday, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo said that stem-cell researchers should be punished in the same way as women who have abortions and doctors who perform them. "Destroying an embryo is equivalent to abortion," Trujillo said. "Excommunication is valid for the women, the doctors and researchers who destroy embryos." It was unclear whether the pope supported the position, and the Vatican did not return calls for comment. But such blunt remarks from a powerful cardinal just before the church convenes a major meeting to discuss the topic could well foreshadow a hardening of Vatican policy on the issue, specialists said. Today, Trujillo will open the church‘s Fifth World Meeting of Families, in Valencia, Spain. Pope Benedict XVI will attend on July 9. As head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Trujillo will be the one to propose new church policies. The church has long opposed embryonic stem-cell research, and has actively campaigned against any medical procedure or research technique that harms human embryos or fetuses. Copyright © 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Prominent cardinal attacks science behind stem cells
14 July 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition.http://www.prolifeblogs.com/articles/archives/2006/07/stem_cell_resou.php
CATHOLIC stem cell researchers
could be banned from taking Holy Communion, relieved of church duties and
even denied a church burial. That's if Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo
gets his way. Head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family,
Trujillo is the most senior Catholic official so far to proclaim on the
morality of stem cell research. "Destroying human embryos is equivalent
to an abortion," he said in an interview in the Catholic weekly Famiglia
Cristiana on 2 July. "Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors
and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve
the law." It remains unclear whether Pope Benedict XVI supports Trujillo.
Nor was it clear whether the threat applies only to researchers who destroy
embryos to extract embryonic stem cells, or whether it extends to researchers
who later work on the derived cells. Whatever the answer, many scientists
are horrified. Chris Shaw of King's College London, who has a licence to
create cloned embryos to study motor neuron disease, says that if stem
cell researchers are to be punished for "abortion," åso too should
Catholic couples who use the pill or intrauterine devices. "This amounts
to religious persecution of scientists," says Julian Savulescu, an ethicist
at the University of Oxford. "Presumably God will be the one to judge the
scientists, not Church leaders."
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