Richard M. Doerflinger — Deputy Director, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — testified on November 15 before a Virginia legislative stem cell research subcommittee regarding the Catholic Church’s perspective on stem cell research. A copy of his testimony is available stemcellresearch.org

Doerflinger expands on the following points:

1. The human embryo, at the one-week-old (blastocyst) stage, is a developing human life.
2. A moral presumption against taking human life requires us at least to treat stem cell research requiring embryo destruction as a last resort, to be pursued only if medical progress cannot be achieved in other ways.
3. Adult stem cells and other alternatives are much more promising than once thought, offering many benefits once thought to be achievable only with embryonic cells.
4. There are more drawbacks and obstacles to the safe and effective clinical use of embryonic stem cells than once thought.
5. Efforts to solve current problems with embryonic stem cells to develop treatments will require ever broader violations of widely accepted ethical norms.

Read the whole thing

An Associated Press piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

A legislative study committee recommended this week that the General Assembly create and finance a statewide umbilical-cord-blood banking system to aid cancer treatment and stem-cell research.

The 15-member panel’s recommendation steers the state away from embryonic stem-cell research, which is controversial because it requires the destruction of a human embryo.