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French Senate adopts ‘catastrophic’ bioethics law

The French Senate voted in favor of a revised bioethics law this afternoon, adding major changes to the text as it stood after approval by the Assembly in February. The pro-life Alliance pour les droits de la vie (Alliance for the rights of life) called the new text “catastrophic” and an “ethical abdication,” reports LifeSiteNews.com.

“Fundamental human rights are being breached here, particularly children’s rights, our most vulnerable citizens,” they said.

Among the worst changes, the text as it now stands permits destructive embryo research. Since the 2001 revision of the law such research was prohibited in principle, with exemptions for “therapeutic” reasons authorized by the French Biomedical Agency. In the new regime it would be authorized in principle, albeit with some safeguards. This marks a major symbolic shift: human embryos would be considered as laboratory material as such.

Senators decided to bow down to members of the scientific community who had been lobbying for a change in the law, despite the 150,000 embryos that are already kept in frozen storage since the first bioethics law allowed them to be frozen and kept for future use.

The president of the senatorial commission for bioethics, Alain Milon, a member of Sarkozy’s governing party, the UMP, explained during the debate that his own daughter does this type of work with embryos: “She went abroad to go on with her research.” Milon introduced several of the liberal changes to the text.

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TAGS: France bioethics law French Biomedical Agency embryo research fundamental human rights

[04/12/2011]

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