London, England, Apr 4, 2008 / 01:19 am
Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of Edinburgh and leader of Scotland’s Catholics, has written an editorial for a British newspaper criticizing the “hype-filled” claims used to advocate the creation of human-animal hybrid embyros. He described the hybrid research itself as involving “grotesque procedures.”
Writing in the Wednesday issue of the Guardian, Cardinal O’Brien said, “I think it is time we deployed a great deal more rigor when listening to the hype-filled claims of those who experiment upon and destroy human life at its most defenseless.”
He said that claims about the hypothetical potential of human-animal hybrid research had been made for almost a decade, “without any substance.”
“As the years have gone by, not one single treatment or therapy has emerged,” the cardinal said. He claimed that research using adult stem cells has led to over 70 therapies and treatments “without destroying a single embryo.”