Mr President, Commissioner, I believe that every person who is motivated by faith in man, right from the very first moment of his existence, must be guaranteed the unconditional respect which is morally due to the human person in its entirety. Therefore, we must state, loud and clear, our opposition to experiments which involve the destruction of human embryos. An embryo is already a human person with a very specific identity, and every action which is not intended to benefit the embryo is an act of violence against the right to life. Parliament must reiterate what it has declared many times in recent years, including last May. It is immoral to use human embryos for research, for those very operations to which the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, has allocated public funding, those operations which have been approved by Tony Blair’s British Government. Sadly, it would appear that commercial interests are driving scientists to explore types of research which involve shortcuts and disregard all consideration for the protection of human life, which we consider to start at the moment of conception. The human body is not a possession, it is nothing to do with ‘having’, it is to do with ‘being’, with being a living person, and it cannot therefore be reduced to a machine made up of components and gears, materials and functions. What people are trying to achieve is almost an attack on life; it is the opposite of the ethic of love of man and his body, even in that initial stage of being alive, of being in the world, the human world, with that body which is himself. To the extent that those who take human embryos and disembowel them, removing the mass of cells inside and extinguishing their life, contrive to say that there is no-one inside, for if there were somebody inside they would be worthy of love or, in a loveless world, they would at least have the right for their human dignity to be respected. Otherwise, the world would consist of violence, brutality and cynicism. Ladies and gentlemen, to oppose destructive research on embryos is not just to adhere to religious principle, but to uphold a principle of civilisation as well: the absolute ban on one man being master of another which should still be at the very heart of our civilisation. We cannot allow man to have such great power over his fellow man. But this does not mean that we are against research, quite the contrary. Alternative research is possible: research on the stem cells present in adults and on cells removed from the umbilical cord immediately after birth, for example. In addition to all this, research is indeed being carried out on adult cells and looks likely to yield results. Many research scientists are involved in alternatives to cloning and they are about to form major national research groups to work in this specific area. Lastly, we propose that a temporary committee be set up to study these issues. We would like there to be in-depth studies of new issues thrown up by the life sciences, on the condition that it is clear that the positions adopted by Parliament cannot be renegotiated. It is those positions which the Commission must take as its starting point to assist us in producing well-founded recommendations.

Political group: PPE-DE