I am disappointed with South Korea's bioethics authority for conditionally lifting its three-year ban on research using cloned human stem cells. The decision confuses scientific integrity with Frankenstein science.

Human welfare does not demand that scientists pursue every avenue available. On the contrary, it depends upon a shared responsibility that involves moral limits.

Science has confirmed with objective certainty that full human life begins at conception with the formation of a genetically complete, self-directing human entity, the embryo.

The main objection then to current methods of embryonic stern-cell research is that they involve the destruction of living human embryos, that is, human beings at the embryonic stage in their lives. This is a principled objection to the direct and intentional killing of human beings.

Amazingly, though embryonic stem cell experiments have failed to produce a single, qualified and therapeutic success, supporters of the embryonic model continue to laud their unproven and currently unethical methods and ignore the fact that adult stem cell therapies are being used extensively today in treating over 70 diseases.

The justification for embryonic stem cell research was always based on the arguments that such cells were "pluripotent".

However, a major breakthrough in November 2007 showed that pluripotent stem cells (embryo-like stem cells) can ethically be derived from human skin cells, by "reprogramming" them with special genes.

This renders obsolete any and all research on human embryos which is, in reality, direct and intentional killing of human beings.

The smart plan would be to encourage the myriad of available alternatives, rather than funding the most unethical type of research that relies on a form of discrimination against an entire class of humans - embryonic humans - being singled out for targeted destruction at the hands of researchers.

Human beings are not raw materials that can be exploited or commodities that can be bought and sold. If a man takes on the power to fabricate man, he also takes on the power to destroy him.

The respect for every human life is an essential condition if a societal life worthy of the name is to be possible. When man's conscience loses respect for life as something sacred, he inevitably ends by losing his own identity.

We must help those who are suffering, but we may not use a good end to justify an evil means. All governments have moral obligation to protect human life in all phases of its existence from conception to natural death.

Paul Kokoski

Ontario, Canada

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