A Vatican panel issued a stinging condemnation of human cloning Tuesday and
warned against the misuse of genetic information. Human cloning, it said,
"represents a grave attack on the dignity of conception and on the right to
an unrepeatable, unpredetermined set of genes." The Pontifical Academy on
Life also warned that using genetic information to "suppress"
malformed or diseased embryos and fetuses amounts to a new form of
"selective eugenics." The statement came at the end of the academy's
three-day conference at the Vatican. The report wrapped up a year of study on
the potential effects of current research into human genetics. The Vatican has
in the past called for a ban on human cloning and also forbids abortion. People
should be conceived and born "in a human way," it has said. In an
earlier report, the academy said human cloning would not result in identical
souls because only God can create a soul.