Church of Scotland Weighs in on Bioethics Issues

January 17, 2006

The Church of Scotland has announced its opposition to the destruction of embryos in research and medicine. This includes embryonic stem cell research, preimplantation sex-selection, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

For some, the use of and subsequent destruction of embryos to extract stem cells is tantamount to sanctioning the murder of one human person in the hopes of saving the life of another, and therefore ought to be absolutely impermissible.
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We feel that, particularly with stem cell research, human embryos will become regarded as mere research objects in a catalogue on which it is open season for scientists to research.
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For many in the Church of Scotland, the human embryo has the moral status of a new-born baby, no research is permissible and they object strongly to (laws) which allow such research.
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Instead of the Christian view of the child as a gift, the child is to be seen in terms of its usefulness against certain criteria. This is an instrumental view of a future child. In the process the couple would be discarding many good embryos. The selection of a future child because of its function or quality is a route we should not begin to go down.