I would like to clarify the declaration by Michael Jennings (June 9) spokesman for Research, Innovation and Science of the European Commission. He is of course correct in pointing out that the EU research programme currently under debate, Horizon 2020, does not consider funding of research involving the new destruction of embryos for the production of stem cells or otherwise. There is an ethical issue however with the funding of research using established or old stem cell lines obtained from previously destroyed embryos which is allowed by the new research programme. There is an issue here because the funding of such research actually lends itself to the commodification of human body parts thereby putting a price on these body parts and encouraging their supply, with the consequent destruction of human lives in the private or public research market providing pluripotent stem cell lines required for research funded by the EU. There is a comparison here equivalent to someone buying human body parts for transplant or other use, from someone else who has killed an innocent human being and is being paid to provide the parts. This implies that the first person is complicit in creating the demand and knowingly urging the destruction of human embryos which are human beings in the early stages of development. There is an ethical issue which Malta cannot turn a blind eye to, without betraying its principles.

One has to also keep in mind the following: First, the European Court of Justice in the recent Brüstle case, has ruled clearly that according to the patenting directive 98/44/EC, no patent can be obtained on embryonic stem cell lines, as this involves human embryo destruction. Second, the actual use of embryonic stem cell lines is scientifically very, very limited when compared to the potential of adult, umbilical or induced pluripotent stem cells, all of which offer much better prospects for research and development than their embryonic counterpart without presenting any ethical quandries. Third, whatever the ends of the research, this does not justify the destruction and commodification of innocent human life at the embryonic stage which is scientifically accepted as being the first stage of the development of the human organism and not just a bunch of human cells. Consequently, the Malta Bioethics Consultative Committee, as it has done in the past, has advised the Maltese government to oppose the funding of the use of existent embryonic stem cell lines in the Horizon 2020 programme, for very obvious ethical reasons.

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