Cardinal attacks embryo Bill on YouTube

BY ANNA ARCO
AS THE CAMPAIGN against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill mounts Cardinal Keith O'Brien has taken to the Internet in his fight against the Government's "abhorrent" proposals.
A fierce critic of the HFE Bill who used his Easter sermon to attack the Government's plans, Cardinal O'Brien took his campaign up a notch last week when he released a video on the internet sharing website YouTube.
The five-minute recording, which has also been sent as a DVD to all of Britain's MPs. shows Cardinal O'Brien outlining his impassioned case against the creation of human and animal hybrid embryos.
The cardinal said: "What concerns us in particular is the possibility of animalhuman hybrids being produced.
"This is something which causes us tremendous concern because we are dealing with life, human life, at its very beginnings and the possibility of mixing up human life and animal life at its beginnings.
"This quite simply is abhorrent to us as Catholic Christians and consequently we wanted to draw the attention of our people to this aspect of the Bill at the very beginning."
Cardinal O'Brien, who recently suffered heart problems and has had a pacemaker installed, stressed that his stance was not antiscience, but that it was based on a conviction about when human life begins.
He said: "Let me state very clearly, that I am not against medical science or research into aspects of seeking cures for these terrible disease which affect so many of us "But what I am against is using human life to seek cures for these diseases.
"I am now wearing a pacemaker, I am a blood donor, I
have signed a donor form so that when I die perhaps organs of mine might be useful to help the life of somebody else."
Cardinal O'Brien added his voice to that of senior clerics south of the border who include Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham and Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue of Lancaster.
Faced with a possible rebellion by Cabinet Ministers, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has relaxed the threeline whip he imposed on Labour MPs over the most
controversial aspects of the Bill. A partial vote of conscience will be allowed on sections of the Bill which cover hybrid embryos, "saviour siblings" and a child's legal need for a father. MPs will be able to vote freely only on the amendments tabled in the Report stages, but will be expected to toe the party line for the second and third readings of the Bill.
ln addition to the DVD, which also urges viewers to contact their MPs, parishes around Scotland will receive a letter from the cardinal calling for them to put pressure on their MPs.