British House of Lords Completes Third Reading on Pro-Cloning HFE Bill

Bioethics   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 30, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

British House of Lords Completes Third Reading on Pro-Cloning HFE Bill

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 30
, 2008

London, England (LifeNews.com) — The British House of Lords completed the third reading yesterday on the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and it is destined to become law. In finishing its work on the bill, the chamber approved all of the amendments approved by the House of Commons.

The measure would allow scientists engage in grisly human cloning projects involving the combination of human and animal parts.

The House of Lords also defeated an attempt to restrict the research on human/animal admixed embryos.

Lord Alton of Liverpool proposed that the bill should stipulate that such beings could only be used when there was no alternative, but 202 opposed the amendment while just 39 supported it.

Meanwhile, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown about the legislation.

Cardinal O’Brien called the embryology bill misguided and compared its various provisions to the horrors of the Hitler regime.

"The hideous savagery of [Nazi] experiments convinced the civilized world that such practices [had to] be outlawed forever," he wrote.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has been one of the leading pro-life groups opposing the pro-human cloning bill.

It has castigated Brown’s government for putting England in the lead internationally in promoting and advocating the most unethical scientific experiments imaginable.

John Smeaton, the national director of SPUC, has said he’s saddened parliament approved the bill.

"Future generations will look back on this macabre bill and wonder how a supposedly civilized nation could have so devalued human life," he said and vowed to raise the issues at the next general election.

Related web sites:
SPUC – https://www.spuc.org.uk

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