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Church of England paper gives support to human cloning
A briefing paper for the Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility suggests that experiments on cloning human embryos research "may be thought to be as morally acceptable," and is akin to a heart transplant or fertility treatments. It is not yet official Church of England policy, but was written John Polkinghorne, chairman of the Board's Science and Medical Technology Committee. Meanwhile, Roman Catholic bishops from England and Wales are taking the opposite view. "We believe that research on cloned human embryos is both immoral and unnecessary. It is immoral because it involves the deliberate creation of new human lives for the sole purpose of extracting stem cells for research," the bishops said in a statement. Polkinghorne says he only supports cloning for therapeutic purposes, and that actually allowing cloned embryos to mature would be "ethically unacceptable."

Muslims, Christians stab each other in Alexandria
After evening prayers in an Alexandria, Egypt, mosque, several Muslims headed over to a nearby Coptic church to stop work on a church. Reportedly, the Egyptian Interior Ministry had ordered the church to cease its renovations, but the church hadn't been told. A fight broke out and three Coptic Christians and five Muslims ended up injured, most of them stabbed.

Kevorkian preyed on vulnerable, says study
Of the 69 suicides Jack Kevorkian assisted in Oakland County, Michigan, 75 percent would have lived for at least another six months. The vast majority—67 percent—were divorced, widowed, or never married, suggesting they had no social or family support. Only 35 percent were in pain, and 7 percent—five patients—had no evidence of disease at all. The findings, by Oakland County medical examiner and longtime Kevorkian critic L.J. Dragovic, were published in the letters section of The New England Journal of Medicine. Kevorkian is serving a 10- to 15-year sentence for second-degree murder. (See more coverage of the study by The Boston Globe, The Detroit News, The Globe and Mail, National Post, and Associated Press)

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December (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44