Lest anyone is tempted to think that the debate over hybrid embryo creation is premature, the troubling announcement on April Fools Day (4/1) that a research team at Newcastle University in England had successfully created the first part-human part-animal hybrid embryo (cow egg, human somatic cell nucleus) in the UK will make clear how late in the day the time actually is.  The embryo survived for three days.  Parliament will debate next month the morality and utility of socially sanctioning the creation of such embryos. 

Recently a Catholic U.S. Coast Guard officer filed suit to prevent being forced to receive a vaccination he believed morally objectionable since the vaccine derived from the remains of an aborted child. The officer, Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Healy filed a complaint just last week, charging the government with using “its own arbitrary judgment of what constitutes Catholic theology while permitting religious exemptions to others.”