The British Parliament's proposal to make new laws allowing limited research on human cloning technology arises from a report on the issue prepared by the chief medical officer, Prof Liam Donaldson.
It is yet another example of how lawmakers are lagging seriously behind on complex bioethical issues as researchers race ahead into uncharted technological territory.
The clear sign of this lack of conviction is the fact that MPs will be given a free vote on this new law. No party will want to tarnish its future electoral prospects by choosing against cloning, and as a consequence, against highly promising medical breakthroughs and advanced new treatments.
The proposed legislative change relates to the use of viable human embryos and tissues taken from them. Under the existing 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, researchers may use embryos under 14 days old for studies into fertility, contraception, miscarriage and congenital disorders.
The existing act does not expressly forbid cloning research, but in practice the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which licenses such work, would never sanction cloning studies.
The proposed new law would allow a much wider range of research, including cloning, while retaining the 14-day age limit on the developing embryo. It would also specifically rule out the production of embryo clones as a fertility treatment or for growth to a full term baby.
The changes are needed because of research advances related to "stem cells", particularly those taken from embryos. At the earliest stages of development most embryonic cells look the same, but after a few days the cells gradually begin to "differentiate" into specific types of cells. This process causes some cells to become skin or liver and others bones and heart muscle.
The embryo is a perfect source for undifferentiated tissue, although studies have also shown that adult tissues also contain some stem cells. They are harder to find and extract however.
Researchers are trying to understand how differentiation works in the hope that they might one day be able to grow transplantable tissues and organs from cultured stem cells. They might also be able to reverse degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.
Research using animal stem cells shows that this approach has enormous potential, but they key to advancing this in human health - and hence the need for legislative change - is embryo cloning.
The researchers first need to show they can produce viable embryo clones, perhaps using the process used to produce Dolly, the cloned sheep. Stem cells could then be extracted from the growing embryo and these could be differentiated into specific cell types.
The assumed scenario in, say, a patient that needed a kidney transplant, would be that a donor egg and the patient's own genetic material would be fused to produce an embryo. Stem cells would be taken from this and grown on as kidney cells. The patient would not reject cells or an organ delivered in this way because there would be an identical genetic match.