WORLD
6A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY. FEBRUARY 28. 2006
BELIEFS
Pope proclaims embryos human at earliest stages
BY NICOLE WINFIELD THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI said Monday that embryos developed for in vitro fertilization deserve the same right to life as fetuses, children and adults — and that that right extends to embryos even before they are transferred into a woman's womb.
The Vatican has long held that human life begins at conception, but Benedict's comments were significant because he specified that even an embryo in its earliest stages — when it is just a few cells — is just as much a human life as an older being.
The pope made the comments during an audience with members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who opened a Vaticansponsored conference Monday on the ethics surrounding the handling of embryos before they are implanted during in vitro procedures.
The Vatican opposes in vitro procedures because embryos created in a laboratory are often discarded, whereas others are frozen and still others are created solely for experimentation or to create stem cells.
Benedict repeated the Roman Catholic Church position that life begins at the moment of conception and deserves to be respected and protected from that moment on — a position set out most authoritatively in the 1995 encyclical "Evangelium Vitae."
That encyclical did not specifically address the status of an embryo before it is implanted after in vitro fertilization — the two or three days of growth in a laboratory during which the fertilized egg is dividing into a group of cells that are transferred by a doctor into a woman's uterus.
Benedict made clear that
there should be no moral distinction between an embryo before implantation and after even though he acknowledged there is no explicit teaching on the first days of life in Scripture.
"The Magisterium of the church has constantly proclaimed the sacred and inviolable character of every human life, from its conception to its natural end." he said.
"This moral judgment is valid already at the beginnings of life of an embryo, before it is implanted in the womb of the mother, who will care for it and nourish it for nine months until the moment of birth," he said.
"The love of God doesn't make any difference between the newly conceived, still in the womb of his mother, and the baby, or the young person, or the mature man or the old man," he said. "He doesn't make the distinction because in each of them he sees his own image and similarity."
While there is no consensus among scientists about when life begins — and thus deserves legal protection — many scientists believe life starts when the first neurological tissues are evident, about two to three weeks after fertilization, said Dr. Jacques Cohen, a reproductive scientist in New York who was not at the conference.
"Scientists draw lines at different points," said Cohen, who runs the largest pre-implantation genetic diagnosis group in the United States, Reprogenetics, as well as the Galileo Research Laboratories, which researches embryonic development.
Some countries have legislation regulating embryo research that says life begins when an egg has been fertilized, he said. Some philosophers argue life begins with consciousness — much later on.
WORLD
Musadeq Sadeq/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An Afghan National Army soldier prays near the Policharki Prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. Security forces with tanks and heavy guns surrounded Kabul's main prison Monday, as authorities resumed negotiations with rioting prisoners but warned they could use force.
Riot pauses for uneasy truce
BY AMIR SHAH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL, Afghanistan — Rebellious inmates at Kabul's main prison agreed Monday to halt violence, and authorities said they restored supplies of water, electricity and food to the prisoners after four people were killed and 38 wounded in the two-day uprising.
The supplies were withheld late Sunday from the roughly 2,000 prisoners in the facility, including women and their children, even though the violence was blamed on some 350 Taliban and al-Qaida detainees.
Although the agreement to stop rioting was only temporary, officials said they were optimistic about a breakthrough in negotiations with the inmates.
The food, water and electric
ity has been restored. For the time being, I am optimistic. Everything is quiet. Let's see what happens tomorrow," said Abdul Salaam Bakshi, chief of prisons in Afghanistan.
Hundreds of police and soldiers circled the sprawling Policharki jail on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in tanks and with other heavy weapons late Sunday.
Gunfire rang out from inside the facility until late Monday, when news broke of progress in the talks. Within hours, truckloads of police withdrew. Many remaining soldiers lounged on the ground, sipping tea and smoking cigarettes as the tension eased.
Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the chief government negotiator, said the prisoners told him that "they would not launch any more attacks right now." He declined to elaborate.
The prisoners are believed armed with small knives and clubs fashioned from wrecked furniture, but do not have guns.
"I promised them I would do my best to solve their problems, and they trust me," he told reporters outside the prison.
Mujaddedi said the negotiators reached an agreement with the prisoners for the wounded inmates to be taken to a hospital, but it was not clear when this would happen. He also said prison authorities were asked to help bury the dead inmates, but did not elaborate further.
During the talks, the prisoners made a range of demands, including an amnesty for an unspecified number of inmates, Mujaddedi said.
A purported spokesman for
the prisoners called The Associated Press and demanded new trials for the inmates, claiming many were innocent or their sentences were too long.
"Two-thirds of the prisoners here are innocent. The courts were unfair," said the man, who identified himself only by the name Maqsodi and said he was calling from inside one of the seized prison blocks. It was not possible immediately to confirm the man's identity.
Feruza Kahiastani, a member of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, told AP after meeting the prisoners that she was also optimistic of a breakthrough, but warned "it could take a long time."
Bakshi said no deadline had been set for a deal to be reached.