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PRESS RELEASE - 15 November 2001 - Immediate
Kirk calls for Urgent Cloning Legislation following Judicial Review
Joint release from
the Society Religion & Technology Project, and Board of Social Responsibility
Church of Scotland
We welcome today's judicial review which has clarified that a loophole exists in the law affecting human cloning. For several years, in various statements and submissions to the Government we have been urging that steps be taken to close any possible ambiguity by bringing forward primary legislation which would ban explicitly all forms of reproductive human cloning. Up to this point the control of reproductive human cloning has depended on the judgement of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority not to license any attempt, rather than that the law made it illegal. While such legislation was promised by the Government in August 2000, this has not happened, and with various groups claiming to be attempting reproductive human cloning, there is great urgency on this matter. The UK Government should also support French and German efforts at the United Nations to create an effective worldwide ban on reproductive cloning.
We also call for a clarification of circumstances under which cloned human embryos could be created for the purposes of research into human stem cells for serious degenerative diseases. The votes in Parliament in December 2000 and January 2001 extended the scope for embryo research to allow spare IVF embryos to be used for this purpose. This also allowed nuclear transfer embryos to be created for the same purpose, but did so without a proper consideration of the particular issues which cloned embryos raise.
See Why we still need a Specific Vote on Embryo Cloning
See SRT's article Parthenogenesis & Cloned Embryos : Don’t jump to hasty conclusions
See also SRT's suite of pages on Human and Animal Cloning, and Stem Cell issues
Contact : Dr Donald Bruce, SRT Project tel. 0131-240 2250, Fax 0131-240 2239,
srtp@srtp.org.uk http://www.srtp/org.uk or Church of Scotland Press Office 0131- 240 2243
or Rev. Dr Richard Corbett, Board of Social Responsibility, 01506 852825
Dr Bruce is Director of the Church of Scotland Society Religion and Technology Project, assessing ethical issues in technology for Scotland's national church, and a leading authority on the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering. The Kirk is at the forefront of the ethical debate over cloning and stem cell technology and has for several years been in dialogue with Roslin researchers.
Rev Dr Richard Corbett is a parish minister in West Lothian and has a background in science.
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