Bishop Sgreccia says the procedure is wrong-footed from the start - experimenting with embryos is reprehensible, as is use of "unnatural" in-vitro embryos created at fertility clinics, like the ones the US scientists employed in their research.
He says Advanced Cell Technology then made things worse by extracting what could be a "totipotent" cell.
"This is not just any cell, but a cell capable of reproducing a human embryo," he said. He added that, in effect: "a second embryo is being destroyed".
BINGO! This Bishop knows his science.
The Church has long opposed in vitro for similar reasons.
Creating embryos in a petri-dish reduces human life to a commodity to be experimented with.
It separates the unitive from the procreative, and many embryos are killed in the process.
"This is not just any cell, but a cell capable of reproducing a human embryo," he said. He added that, in effect: "a second embryo is being destroyed".
Raises some interesting philosophical questions then. Could someone simply grow 10 billion of these cells? Would that therefore mean over half the human population of Earth existed in their lab?