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On August 24, one day after the Clinton administration allowed federal funding for stem cell research, the Vatican spoke out condemning research using cells from human embryos as "gravely immoral. A good end doesn't make good an action that in itself is bad," wrote the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life.
The Roman Catholic church teaches that life begins at conception and must be safeguarded from that point. Removing embryonic cells for research would kill the embryo.
It "is a gravely immoral, and thus gravely illicit, act," the document said. It also spoke out against cloning to produce embryos from which to take stem cells.
The Vatican academy did not dispute the hope that stem cell research offers and it encouraged the use of cells from adults instead of embryos, which it called "the more reasonable and humane step."
A week before, the Vatican similarly condemned British plans to ease a ban on human cloning to allow cloning for research on embryos and stem cells.
The Vatican academy, whose members include both Roman Catholic and non-Catholic scientists, was set up by Pope John Paul II in 1994 to help the Vatican understand biomedical issues with ethics in mind. 
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