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"The Roslin Institute's application today for a license to create cloned human embryos should be treated with caution," says Dr Donald Bruce, Director of the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland. While it is legal in the UK to create cloned embryos for stem cell research, it has aroused widespread national and international concern. The European Parliament has called for it to be banned and the European Commission's ethical advisors consider it premature.
"The aim of the Roslin proposal is laudable, to produce cells which exhibit motor neuron disease for studying the disease and perhaps developing future treatments, but it raises big ethical issues."
First, there is a significant danger that it would lead to the misuse of the technology by maverick scientists in some other country where there was little or no regulation, who wish to make and implant cloned embryos to create cloned babies, regardless of major risks and ethical objections. "It is unwise at this time to allow cloned embryo research until there is a United Nations ban on reproductive human cloning," says Dr Bruce. Given that Parliament overwhelmingly outlawed reproductive human cloning, the UK bears a moral responsibility to the wider international community for the outcomes of its actions here. The Church of Scotland had called for such a ban in 1997. Such a ban would have almost universal national approval. But it is currently stalled by a US-backed proposal to ban cloning for research as well, for which there seems little prospect of agreement.
Secondly, creating cloned embryos just for research poses ethical problems for many people who might accept using surplus IVF embryos, since these would be discarded anyway. They feel it is too instrumental to create human embryos just to destroy them. It loses any sense that the human embryo has 'special status' and reduces it to a research tool or a mere resource for spare parts.
Lastly, when stem cells are more readily available from spare IVF embryos, the case for cloned embryo research for therapy is dubious, as the EC ethical advisors judged. A House of Lords Select Committee concluded that it would need a quite exceptional reason. Roslin's proposal is the perhaps most persuasive case so far made in that it would provide a long term supply of cells which carry this incurable disease which are unavailable by any other route. "It requires a careful medical evaluation of the realistic expectations by comparison with other options. We should not resort to the drastic step of creating cloned human embryos unless it would achieve a major medical breakthrough that nothing else could hope to achieve, and that is not so far clear," concludes Dr Bruce. At this stage only outline information has been published about this proposal, which is insuffuicent to assess whether this is an exceptional case or not.
We commend Roslin for avoiding making exaggerated claims about so called 'therapeutic cloning'. A number of researchers and promoters have sought to justify cloned embryo use claiming that it could eventually lead to the production of genetically matched replacement cells. This is misleading. To provide a therapy for the hundreds of thousands of potential patients who suffer from degenerative diseases would require enormous numbers of human eggs. This is unrealistic and would benefit only a very few rich instead of being a general benefit to humankind.
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