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“The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) should at this time refuse a license application from a Newcastle research centre to create cloned human embryos,” 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 main aim of the Newcastle proposal is to improve the efficiency of making cloned human embryos in stem cell research. There are significant dangers, however, that it would lead to the misuse of the technology by maverick scientists who wish to create cloned human babies. The Church of Scotland has since 1997 called for a global ban on reproductive human cloning, but steps towards such a ban at the United Nations are currently stalled. In the absence of a UN ban, it would be very inadvisable for the UK to promote the science that would make it easier for someone to perform reproductive human cloning in another country with little or no regulation. The UK bears a moral responsibility to the international community for the outcomes of its actions here.
The proposal also seems to be too speculative for such an ethically sensitive area. In 2001, a House of Lords Select Committee concluded that the HFEA would need a quite exceptional reason to allow research involving cloned embryos. The information so far made public suggests this is not the case. It is a development of a long term research tool not the plugging of an vital and immediate missing link in medical research.
Lastly the researchers claim that it could eventually lead to the production of genetically matched replacement cells – so called therapeutic cloning. Such claims are now increasingly criticised in the scientific community for being impractical. “It is of concern to see claims about therapeutic cloning continuing to be made when it seems unlikely ever to become a clinically reality,” says Dr Bruce. “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 seems unrealistic and probably too expensive. There is a danger that this might only benefit the very rich instead of being a general benefit to humankind.”
The Newcastle proposal also involves creating embryos by chemically fertilising human eggs - parthenogenesis. Like cloned embryos this is highly controversial. Before proceeding with any applications in this area, the HFEA should test out public attitudes to both parthenogenetic and cloned embryos with careful qualitative research, as it did recently over sex selection. It would be premature to allow cloned embryo research at this time.
Dr Bruce is Director of the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland, and has been in the forefront to the debate on animal and human cloning since 1996.
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