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"Claims made by researchers about cloned human embryos are misleading the public," says Dr Donald Bruce, Director of the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland. He was responding to the announcements that Newcastle scientists had created the first UK cloned human embryos, and that the Korea researchers who created the world's first cloned human embryos a year ago had improved the efficiency of their methods. Both groups cited that their research would lead to therapeutic cloning.
"The idea of creating cloned embryos to provide genetically matched replacement cells for all patients with diabetes and other degenerative diseases would require millions of donated human eggs in the UK alone. That is not a likely prospect." The number of UK patients suffering from diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzhemier's and other diseases for which cell replacement therapy is aimed runs into hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. Each patient would require their own personal cloned embryo, which would require several human eggs per attempt. The donation of intimate tissues by an invasive and sometimes painful procedure on such a scale is without precedent. Pressures may also be put on women to donate.
Alternatively, if only a few eggs were available, these therapies would be available only for a select few who could afford to pay. This would raise questions of justice and honesty about research whose justification is being presented in terms of widespread availability of a new 'regenerative' medicine. "What nobody is saying is that this looks like being a therapy only for a fortunate rich few. To raise exaggerated expectations of patients' on the back of a research result groups is irresponsible and damaging." says Dr Bruce
There are also serious unanswered safety concerns about human cells derived from cloned embryos when the cloning process continues to cause so many problems in animals. Failure to reprogramme the cloned embryo properly regularly causes malformation of animal embryos. No scientist currently knows whether these would already affect the early human embryo at the stage when stem cells are removed from it. Cells used to treat patients could turn cancerous, for example. Until such basic science has been done, talk of therapies from cloned embryos is far from reality.
To create cloned embryos as a source of 'spare' cells is also widely seen as trivialising the human embryo. The European Commission's ethical advisors considered cloned embryo research premature, when so much work is being done on adult stem cells and on stem cells from embryos left over from IVF treatments and otherwise destroyed. A House of Lords committee concluded that it would need an exceptional reason to justify using cloned embryos. At this time there seems no real ethical justification for the Newcastle or Korean work reported today, when alternative and less inherently risky routes to the same end offer more realistic and more ethical prospects for therapies.
Dr Bruce has spoken and written widely on the ethics of cloning and stem cells, and has engaged with the Roslin Institute on genetics and cloning issues since 1994. He was an external ethical advisor on animal cloning to the former PPL Therapeutics plc. The views expressed are those of the Society, Religion and Technology Project (SRT) of the Church of Scotland and have not yet been considered by its General Assembly. SRT is part of an expert working group within the church to study these and other emerging issues in human embryology and stem cells, which will in the following months prepare a report for the General Assembly's consideration.
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