Policy on embryo research continues to zig-zag. Having first said it would outlaw the creation of animal-human hybrids for medical experimentation, the Government then decided to allow it. That position was endorsed last week by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
I hope that the Government will change tack yet again. I am deeply uncomfortable with the use of human embryos for research. The HFEA recognised the revulsion many feel at such use of human cells, but insisted that the benefits outweighed such feelings. The recent go-ahead for the creation of ‘cybrid’ embryos – created by the use of a human cell or its nucleus to fertilise an animal egg from which the nucleus has been removed – brings more dilemmas.
If the embryos are human enough to be of use in research, are they not human enough for it to be wrong to experiment on them – whatever the possible benefits?
Huzzah for +Rochester! Good to hear from the C of E on this.
He should have been made Archbishop of York instead of the hopeless one they have. But then he would have been an intellectual challenge to Williams.
I truly hadn’t thought of that. Why use human embryos at all unless their very humanness makes it desirable. And if you then acknowledge them to be unique then you have shown why they should not be used. Otherwise use only animal embryos.
I certainly second his appointment at York. The present member is suffering from Weakness of Intellect.
I do wish the ABC would take this position and make it his own in capital letters, and the biggest someone’s in the US should do the same thing. I just don’t see,e.g., the Anglican Church in America speaking out in the media, and I would certainly like to know why. We have an archbishop Somebodyor Other who never speaks in the American media ever. Hell, I can’t even remember his name and he’s my archbishop. LM
Nazir-Ali is close to good. Feeling discomfort, no matter how deep, doesn’t amount to a value judgment. Nor are dilemmas wrong. But when he says “whatever the possible benefits” – now he tiptoes into the ethical arena.
I hate to sound negative (the good bishop is just being honest), but the enemies of morality have absolutely zero regard for personal feelings of discomfort, or indeed even of revulsion or nausea. Give them a ghost of an excuse to label morality as a mere gut reaction, a question of taste or whatever, and they will use it.
The Church of England has failed itself to speak up for fatherhood and has become one of the most feminized churches in the west. I do not think WO has helped this any – most of those being ordained in that church now are women in their 40s and 50s. Most of these are woolly in their theology (and scarcely educated at that, in part-time ‘training’ courses) and liberal in their beliefs, as surveys have shown. They are not evangelsits or missionaries and will not end up leading vibrant churches but will instead nurse the sickly ones to the grave. This is the nettle that the liberal leaning ‘open evangelicals’ are unable to grasp.
As well, the English bishops (but not N-A) totally failed to resist the spread of gay partnerships in the CoE clergy by not using a godly discipline that was well within their powers; instead, they were rather willingly trussed by the pro-gay Blair government.
There are even a couple of ‘transgendered’ clergy in the CofE; one can only imagine what dysfunctional communities they’ll form around themselves.
FamilyScholars.org reports:
Lesbians and single women in Britain are increasing their share of donor insemination, accounting for 38% of such treatment last year compared with 28% in 2003 and 18% in 1999. At present the law requires a child’s need of a father to be considered in fertility treatment, but under a proposed change this would be dropped.
I had thought that we had ample social-science evidence that fatherhood is crucial to a child’s well-being…