NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, May 20, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Drs. Alison Murdoch and Miodrag Stojkovic of the Centre for Life at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England have announced that one of their cloned human embryos has survived to the blastocyst stage, that at which it may be killed for its stem cells. An embryo at the blastocyst stage consists of a ball of outer cells, and an inner cell mass of stem cells that if allowed to develop normally, will develop the parts of the child’s body. This inner cell mass is prized by stem cell researchers who posit that the cells can be induced to cure diseases in other people.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, (HFEA), considered one of the most permissive such government regulatory bodies in the world, gave the researchers a license in October 2004 to move ahead with experiments to create human clones for so-called ‘therapeutic’ reasons.
British pro-lifers again reiterated that the clone is a human being, no matter what its creators intend to do to it. “Cloning for research purposes, which involves the manufacture of human embryos destined for experimentation and subsequent destruction, is profoundly unethical,” said Julia Millington, of the ProLife Alliance.
Newcastle Human Embryonic Stem Cell Group has launched an appeal to raise around £40 million to accelerate its research. No information was made available as to how many previous attempts had created clones who had not subsequently survived. The method, called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, is notoriously unreliable. 275 attempts were required before Dolly the sheep survived to birth.
The creation of cloned embryos in Britain and Korea will likely put pressure on countries that have some restrictions to make the cells available from overseas and to begin cloning experiments at home. Only Italy, however, has put in place any meaningful restrictions on in vitro fertilization and cloning and these are likely to be lifted by a referendum.
Read previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage here.