Top Vatican official condemns cloning of human embryo

A top Vatican official has condemned the first cloning of a human embryo.

Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone says even the aim of curing disease with embryo stems cells can't justify the scientific step.

His views come in response to news that a six-cell embryo has been cloned by scientists in the United States.

"Therapeutic aims are excellent, they are praiseworthy. However, it is the means used that raise the questions," he said in an interview on Italian state television.

If it involves "production and destruction of human beings to treat other human beings," said Bertone, "the end doesn't justify the means."

Vatican teaching holds that life begins at conception.

Bertone is a top official at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which aims to protect orthodoxy in church teaching.

Bertone praised as a "true scientific conquest that is also ethically positive" research intended to obtain stem cells from adult tissue.

The scientists involved in the embryo cloning have said they're not interested in producing babies by cloning but only to create embryos as a source of stem cells for treating disease.