The Embryology Bill, cui bono?

Max Kaye

My favourite cardinal is Cardinal Fang. Also Cardinal Sin. No.... My two favourite cardinals are....

David

"cui bono?" Medical science?

Chuck Unsworth

I've never had a favourite Cardinal, maybe that's because I've viewed all Cardinals in the same jaundiced light. But I've got a favourite Bishop or two. Anyway, Ms Dorries is right - Cui Bono, indeed. However, the same could be said of most politicians.

Vincent McKenzie

Thank God for Cardinal O'Brien

Tom Freeman

"what is really monstrous is that the Bill ever saw the light of day in the first place" Yes, it's unspeakably awful that an elected government should be allowed to publish legislative proposals with which Nadine Dorries disagrees.

Sam

Thank God for Cardinal O'Brien in church and Nadine Dorries in Wesminster. God hand picks his brave footsoldiers.

Nicholas

Heard on BBC News this evening: "The government is looking for ways to pass the Bill without requiring MPs to vote". I bet they are.

Oliver Kamm

"What is really monstrous is that the Bill ever saw the light of day in the first place." I too am disconcerted by this remark. Would Ms Dorries care to come back and explain it?

Matt

The govt put Catholic MP Jim Devine, a whips nark and govt loyalite on the Today programme this morning.
Watch his promotion follow over the next few months. The interviewer lapped it up and went along with it. For five minutes the British public were stiched up by the BBC asking soft ball questions of an MP who has NEVER voted against his govt, but will be happy to do so against his church and God. Is that the kind of man we want as an MP?

Ben Stevenson

Tom Freeman and Oliver Kamm, If the government introduced a bill that allowed medical experiments to be done without consent on children, or adults, would you be disturbed that such a bill was ever proposed, even if it eventually failed to pass? If an embryo or foetus is a living human being, which should be treated with dignity just as much as any other human being should, then it is monstrous that this bill was ever proposed. I am pleased that MPs such as Nadine Dorries are opposing this bill.

Augustus

I don't know the background to this research, but "the idea of mixing animal and human genes is not just evil, its crazy", as the Cardinal asserts, doesn't seem ay all wide of the mark. A new statutory bioethics commission? Appointed by whom, and for whose benefit? Why bother with that? Just stick to ethical practices like any decent nation.

Alison

Good luck Nadine. So many of us are sick to death of this Labour Government not listening to people like us. Many of us who are not religious want to see an end to abortions being carried out so late.

Tom Freeman

Ben, "If the government introduced a bill that allowed medical experiments to be done without consent on children, or adults, would you be disturbed that such a bill was ever proposed, even if it eventually failed to pass?" Yes. However I'd be far more disturbed by the prospect of its success than by the fact of its being proposed. For contrast: I think the worst thing about the BNP is their views, not the fact that they are allowed to put those views to the electorate.

Tom

Good to see that Nadine Dorries is now asking "Cui bono?" rather than, as she did on her blog a couple of weeks ago, "Que beno?" - which, so far as I can work out, doesn't mean anything at all. Progress may be slow, but that's not the same as no progress at all. http://www.dorries.org.uk/Blogs/2008/Mar/04#04

David Lindsay

Oh, how they are howling! “Park’n’Alz, Park’n’Alz”, they cry. As they always do, of course. Embryonic stem-cell research has been almost completely abandoned for failing to deliver those or any other goods, so don’t believe a word of it this time round. If it’s progress you want, then you need to look at the record of adult stem-cell research, which Catholic universities in Italy were derided to the skies for pioneering at the height of the embryonic stem-cell research craze.

On this Bill as on so much else, it is necessary to apply the John Smith Test: would John Smith have done this? No, of course not, any more than he would have allowed the betting shops to open on Good Friday.

Much is made of the “modernisation” first of Labour, then of the Tories, and now of the Lib Dems, as being concerned with cutting them off from everywhere except the South East, and from everyone except the upper and upper middle classes. This is all perfectly true.

But just as important is that “modernisation” is about cutting off all three parties from their roots in the Christianity still professed by seventy-two per cent of Britons.

The Tories and the Lib Dems are only giving free votes because they embarked on this process that little bit later. They will never do so on anything comparable in the future. And we have far, far, far more of this sort of thing to look forward to.

As for the Polly Toynbees of the world, their real objection is to the existence of any locus of moral authority other than themselves. But even these days, rather more people go to Mass than read the Guardian (although there is far more crossover than is often supposed), voting with their feet.

In an election for National Moral Leader (not that I am advocating such an election, but if one were ever held), then who would take more votes? Cardinal O’Brien? Or Polly Toynbee? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Martin Miller

Oh, how they are howling! “Park’n’Alz, Park’n’Alz”, they cry. As they always do, of course. Embryonic stem-cell research has been almost completely abandoned for failing to deliver those or any other goods, so don’t believe a word of it this time round. If it’s progress you want, then you need to look at the record of adult stem-cell research, which Catholic universities in Italy were derided to the skies for pioneering at the height of the embryonic stem-cell research craze.

On this Bill as on so much else, it is necessary to apply the John Smith Test: would John Smith have done this? No, of course not, any more than he would have allowed the betting shops to open on Good Friday.

Much is made of the “modernisation” first of Labour, then of the Tories, and now of the Lib Dems, as being concerned with cutting them off from everywhere except the South East, and from everyone except the upper and upper middle classes. This is all perfectly true.

But just as important is that “modernisation” is about cutting off all three parties from their roots in the Christianity still professed by seventy-two per cent of Britons.

The Tories and the Lib Dems are only giving free votes because they embarked on this process that little bit later. They will never do so on anything comparable in the future. And we have far, far, far more of this sort of thing to look forward to.

As for the Polly Toynbees of the world, their real objection is to the existence of any locus of moral authority other than themselves. But even these days, rather more people go to Mass than read the Guardian (although there is far more crossover than is often supposed), voting with their feet.

In an election for National Moral Leader (not that I am advocating such an election, but if one were ever held), then who would take more votes? Cardinal O’Brien? Or Polly Toynbee? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Pat Duignan

The Cardinal is apparantly not aware that all the worlds insulin on which diabetics depend comes from bacteria or yeast in which a human gene has been mixed with non-human genes by being added to the bacteria or yeast's DNA.