Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-29-Speech-4-041"
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"en.20011129.1.4-041"2
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"During this debate it has at times been difficult to distinguish heat from light. As politicians we have a duty to inform ourselves before being dogmatic and proscriptive on matters of medical and scientific research, albeit with the regulatory tool of the precautionary principle for areas of scientific uncertainty available to us.
We must allow research to continue in order to relieve the suffering of the millions with serious diseases and spinal injuries, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, motor neurone disease, diabetes, cancer, heart disease: the list is endless. However, the proper regulation and licensing of research in the scientific community is a matter for all of us, at Member State, EU and international level, and the present state of that regulation is of some concern.
Let me be quite clear. I draw the line under reproductive cloning, eugenics and the deliberate creation of embryos for research. But even the Vatican does not ban all embryonic stem cell research: it accepts it on material from spontaneous abortions.
To those who would say that it is only a semantic distinction between therapeutic and reproductive cloning, I say: I have a butcher's knife in my hand, I can cut up your steak with it quite legally, or I can cut your head off with it quite illegally – proper sanctions, proper penalties. We have so many examples of that in life today.
To not allow public funding for research which is legal in a Member State is a curious sanction: nobody is forcing any Member State to make any type of research legal. Either the research is acceptable and respectful of human life and the dignity of humankind or it is not. How it is funded hardly makes it more or less ethical.
Let us regulate and license research in this most sensitive and important of areas with commensurate penalties for the exceptional rogue who would put self-glory above the common good and the destiny of humankind. Wherever you find him or her, may God direct the hands, hearts and heads of the scientific, political and medical communities at this exciting but frightening and bewildering crossroads in time as we test the frontiers of knowledge."@en1
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