UNIQUE GENES ARE A HUMAN RIGHT, VATICAN SAYS

March 3, 1998

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- 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. It also forbids artificial fertilization, abortion and birth control. 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.