Sir, The new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is essential if Britain is to maintain its responsible leadership in stem-cell research, which offers the possibility of revolutionary treatments for devastating diseases such as Parkinson’s, diabetes and cancer. The Bill is not about creating monsters or mocking the sanctity of human life. Indeed, it will reduce the number of human eggs and embryos used in the production of stem cells for research.

Medical charities, patient groups and the research community are dismayed at the intervention of Catholic bishops at the end of what has been a long, thorough, national debate on this Bill. Scientists should not challenge the spiritual authority of religious leaders, but they are entitled to question the factual evidence on which moral pronouncements are based.

I would like to invite those bishops and parliamentarians who have concerns about the Bill to take part in an open-minded discussion about what exactly it will permit, what the consequences of its defeat would be, and what this research might achieve.

I would be happy to broker such a meeting, and I am confident that senior scientists and representatives of patient groups would welcome the opportunity to explain the background to this important legislation.

Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience, Universities of Oxford and Warwick, Former Chairman of the International Stem Cell Forum

Sir, The Prime Minister will allow members of his party a free vote on those parts of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill dealing with the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos (report, Mar 22). MPs may exercise freedom of conscience to vote against the proposals on moral grounds as long as the Government is sure to win. How moral is this compromise arrangement? Does it really allow freedom of conscience?

Dissenting members would be registering only what amounts to an ineffective protest vote. It would hardly indicate their strength of moral conviction about the serious issues raised by this Bill. Members should be given unqualified freedom to express their moral convictions.

Hywel W. Roberts, Southampton

Sir, Catholic MPs, and other MPs inclined to consider the views of the Roman Catholic Church on the Bill, should imagine themselves in Rome in 1633, deciding if it should be legal to claim that the Earth goes round the Sun. Would they take the word of theologians, or of men of science? Would they, as the Church did, condemn Galileo to imprisonment for being correct?

There is a good prospect that this science will bring great relief to mankind. Fortunately, these days there is little risk that superstition will triumph over wisdom. The prelates speaking in sensational terms either do not understand what is proposed or, worse, choose to misrepresent it.

I have not, in the past, concerned myself with the religion of candidates for public office. Perhaps an over-enlightened approach?

Stephen Phillip, Wrexham

Sir, I feel it inexplicable that leaders of a faith which embraces, and is built on, a series of biological impossibilities should try to obstruct research into finding cures for debilitating human diseases.

Maurice Juggins, Eckington, Worcs

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