Klonowanie człowieka w świetle nauki Kościoła katolickiego i prawa polskiego

In the first part of the paper, the author discusses the moral status of a human embryo in the light of the teaching of the Catholic Church. The author argues that the human life starts as early as at conception, in the embryo stage. The author’s statement is that the human embryo is a human being, a being who has dignity and whose bodily and spiritual integrity must be respected. The author sets the requirements for operations performed on the human embryo, including experiments. Finally, the author touches upon the question of using so-called biological material from illegal sources. In the second part, the author presents the position of the Catholic Church on cloning, including both reproductive and therapeutic cloning, as well as discusses hybrid cloning, focusing on the medical and the moral aspects of this procedure. The author also handles the subject of embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. The author devotes the third and final part of the paper to discuss Polish regulations on cloning and embryo research.