Nobel Medicine Prize award welcomed

(Vatican Radio) The European Bishops Conference or (COMECE) and a number of institutes that engage with the moral questions arising in clinical practice and biomedical research have welcomed the awarding of Nobel Medicine Prize to two scientists for their work on stem cells.
John B Gurdon from the UK and Shinya Yamanaka from Japan shared the prize for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.

Josephine Quintavalle, Director of the UK based group “Comment on Reproductive Ethics” says Yamanaka, in particular, has a deep understanding of the dignity of the human embryo.

“He moved us all with that very simple understanding of the embryo and its humanness, humanity and its value”.

She also told Lydia O’Kane that, “His concept of the embryo became very quickly our concept of the embryo, the scientific reality that an embryo is the beginning of human life” Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Josephine Quintavalle