The prospect of cloning human embryos for therapeutic research which could eradicate non-congenital diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer's disease moved a step closer yesterday, when the British government announced proposals to change the law to enable the research to go ahead. MPs and peers will be a given a free vote on the legislation.
Ministers were responding to a report by the government's Chief Medical Officer, Prof Liam Donaldson, which recommended that a relaxation in the law would open up "a new medical frontier" and had the potential to establish new treatments for chronic diseases and injuries and relieve human suffering.
The new legislation proposes a relaxation of the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act - which permits research on human embryos up to 14 days old for the treatment of congenital diseases, infertility and contraception - to allow embryo clones to be made from human cells. Non-specific stem cells would then be extracted from the cloned embryos, which would be destroyed before they are 14 days old. Scientists hope they can go on to develop healthy tissue, such as skin cells or liver cells, from the extracted stem cells.
The government made clear, however, that cloning whole human beings would not be allowed and it is proposing a new law banning reproductive cloning in an attempt to ensure no such research is carried out.
Lord Winston, the director of research at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, said he hoped MPs and peers would vote in favour of therapeutic cloning: "Most people, when the science is explained and the possibilities are explained, will regard this as a sensible and moral decision.
"If they don't I would be very disappointed. We would be relinquishing what many scientists think is the most important area of science in the last three decades. It's very, very important, as important as the genome and in many ways has more practical benefit."
The director of research management at the Medical Research Council (MRC), Dr Diana Dunstan, also welcomed the development: "While growing whole organs for transplantation may be many decades away, the production of human nerve cells to repair or to treat people with Parkinson's and Huntingdon's disease could be an early benefit of this type of research, if permitted."
But the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Thomas Winning, who is also chairman of the bioethics committee of the Catholic Bishops of Britain and Ireland, said the recommendation would "shock and disappoint" many people. "Obtaining stem cells from a human embryo is morally wrong because it involves the destruction of human life," Cardinal Winning said.