Human Cloning Immoral, Pope Says

Organ Donation Is 'Act Of Love,' Embryo Research Is Bad, He Tells Doctors

By Associated Press

ROME -- Pope John Paul II sought Tuesday to lay down moral guidelines for medical research in the 21st century, endorsing organ donation and adult stem cell study but condemning human cloning and embryo experiments.

John Paul's address to an international conference of 5,000 transplant specialists appeared to be an attempt to set moral limits on such life-and-death issues as organ transplants and related research.

John Paul won applause from the transplant experts when he encouraged organ donation, calling it an "act of love."

But if his stance against embryo research were followed, "all these people with serious diseases would have no hope," said one supporter of the research, Dr. Robert Goldstein of the New York-based Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

Underscoring how important he considered the issue, the 80-year-old pontiff left his summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo outside Rome to address the International Congress of the Transplantation Society.

John Paul spelled out the church's position on transplant-related matters, condemning the sale of organs, insisting on informed consent on both sides of the exchange and singling out the complete end of brain activity as an acceptable way to determine that death has occurred.

Calling organ donation "a genuine act of love," he said, "Accordingly, any procedure which tends to commercialize human organs or to consider them as items of exchange or trade must be considered morally unacceptable."

The decision on who should be first in line to receive organs can be based only on medical factors, John Paul said -- not on age, sex, race, religion, social standing, usefulness to society or any other standard.

He left the door open for cross-species transplants.

John Paul also spoke out against cloning and related embryo research, a rapidly developing field in the four years since Dolly the lamb first struggled to its cloned hooves.

In the church's view, cloning is irreconcilable with its position that sex between married couples is the only acceptable way to create human life.

"Methods that fail to respect the dignity and value of the person must always be avoided," John Paul told the medical workers.

"I am thinking in particular of attempts at human cloning with a view to obtaining organs for transplants: These techniques, insofar as they involve the manipulation and destruction of human embryos, are not morally acceptable, even when their proposed goal is good in itself."

Copyright © 2000 The Detroit News.

This article posted September 26, 2000.