Firstly re #479: Sources in Vietnam (our own) suggest that CWN have it wrong! Fr. Nguyen Van Ly is not a Salesian and we have no work in Hue. So for us, I guess, that's good news. Pity about Fr. Ly though!
AUSSIE SALESIAN BRINGS SOME SENSE - AND SOME KEY PLAYERS - TO THE EMBRYO DEBATE
Julian Fox
MELBOURNE - 19th May -- This coming week a major symposium on Human embryo research, manipulation and ethics will be hosted at the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics. The host and Director of the Centre, Dr. (Fr.) Norman Ford SDB has cobbled together some of the key players in the debate which has always held a certain prominence, almost one of origin in the city of Melbourne, since it was there, 15 or more years ago, that Alan Trounson and others rose to world prominence for their experimentation with in vitro fertilization.
It was those same people and issues that led the Melbourne Church at the time to ask Fr. Ford, already a distinguished philosopher in his own field, to tackle the ethical minefields laid by the experimentation.
Fr. Ford, recently awarded a Fellowship of the Melbourne College fo Divinity precisely for his ability to remain in dialogue with and gain respect from these scientists and doctors, has brought them together once again in the Centre which he now directs. Alan Trounson, now Director of the Centre for Early Human Development, will address the symposium on Human Embryo Research, while Dr. Paul Simmons, Head of the Stem Cell Laboratory at Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, will speak about the alternative of somatic stem cell use.
Fr. Ford himself, on the 24th May, a day rather special to himself, the Salesians, and Australia (Feast of Mary Help of Christians, Patroness of Australia), will provide ethical perspectives developed in the light of the Church's teaching and from many years of productive research and dialogue with ethicists and medical practitioners around the world.
