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Church leaders clash over embryos

A leader of the Scottish Episcopal Church says Cardinal Keith O'Brien was wrong to call for a halt to hybrid-embryo research, claiming the work is the last hope of treatment for many in suffering.

Writing in The Scotsman today, the Rt Rev Robert Gillies, the Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, says the view of the head of the Scottish Catholic Church is not the only legitimate Christian position on the controversial issue.

He says that, while he wishes crippling genetic disorders such as Huntington's and muscular dystrophy could be cured by conventional medicine, that was not possible.

He goes on: "It seems that if health and wellbeing is to come to sufferers, then the best option for them will come through stem-cell, including hybrid-embryo, research, given the current absence of any alternative."

Professor Werner G Jeanrond, of Glasgow University's theology and religious studies department, said the embryology debate had been played out in Sweden along similar lines but had caused no long-lasting enmity between religious groups.

Professor Sheila McLean, a medical ethicist, supported the bishop's beliefs. She said: "It seems to be two religious approaches: doctrinal, which is the Catholic Church, and the other, which can be broadly described as compassionate or Christian.

Full story and quotes at The Scotsman.

Should Christians support hybrid embryo research?

"Yes," says the Rt Rev Robert Gillies, Bishop of Aberdeen & Orkney in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

"I find myself in disagreement with the Cardinal Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh over stem cells and hybrid embryo research. And I say this fully respecting his leadership in his particular arena within the Christian Church. But his view is not the only view that can be legitimately given from within a Christian perspective."

Full article at The Scotsman.