Catholic MPs on the Government side have demanded a free vote - without party whips - so that they can vote against certain clauses of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill now before Parliament. Three Catholic members of the Cabinet have indicated that they may even resign over the issue, and are said to have rejected the offer to be allowed to abstain on what they have said is a matter of conscience.

The issue of principle is simply stated: human life, which the Catholic Church teaches us starts at conception, is sacred. Hence no human being should ever be used as a means to another end, however desirable. What the Government wants the bill to permit does precisely that. For instance, it would allow experiments involving the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos in order to advance research into the treatment of disease.

That the Church takes such issues seriously was underlined in an interview given by Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, second in command at the Apostolic Penitentiary in the Vatican, as part of what the media colourfully described as a new set of deadly sins. Among the most serious modern sins he mentioned were genetic manipulation and embryo experimentation.

Related to this is a fundamental challenge to the way in which the British Government, and other Western governments in similar situations, seem eager to bulldoze out of the way any ethical objections to proposals put forward by scientists, who understandably would like a free hand to do whatever suits the project they are working on. Secular culture has become narrow-mindedly utilitarian - ends justifying means - with little patience with those who hold to moral absolutes such as the inviolability of the right to life. So creating a human embryo in order to experiment on it, and destroying it when it is of no further use, is judged acceptable if the result might lead eventually to better medical treatment.

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