CATHOLIC stem cell researchers could be banned from taking Holy Communion, relieved of church duties and even denied a church burial. That鈥檚 if Cardinal Alfonso L贸pez Trujillo gets his way.
Head of the Vatican鈥檚 Pontifical Council for the Family, Trujillo is the most senior Catholic official so far to proclaim on the morality of stem cell research. 鈥淒estroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion,鈥� he said in an interview in the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana on 2 July. 鈥淓xcommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law.鈥�
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.
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Whatever the answer, many scientists are horrified. Chris Shaw of King鈥檚 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 鈥渁bortion鈥�, so too should Catholic couples who use the pill or intrauterine devices.
鈥淭his amounts to religious persecution of scientists,鈥� says Julian Savulescu, an ethicist at the University of Oxford. 鈥淧resumably God will be the one to judge the scientists, not Church leaders.鈥�
