Permission to clone human embryos for experiments

LONDON - The scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep has been given permission to use the same technique to clone human embryos for medical experiments.

It is only the second licence issued by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) that allows scientists to clone human embryos for research purposes.

Professor Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh will use the Dolly technique he pioneered to create cloned embryos from skin cells taken from patients with motor neuron disease.

The aim is to produce embryonic stem cells - which can be made to develop into any one of the dozens of specialised tissues of the body - that can be studied in the laboratory for signs of the neurodegenerative disease.

Professor Wilmut said yesterday that the embryos would not be allowed to live beyond the legal limit of 14 days before being destroyed and that there is no intention of allowing cloned babies to be born - which is illegal in Britain.

"This is not reproductive cloning in any way. Once the stem cells are removed for cell culture the remaining cells will be destroyed. The embryonic stem cells that we derive in this way will only be used for research into motor neuron disease," Professor Wilmut said.

Professor Christopher Shaw, a neuroscientist at King's College London who will collaborate on the project, said the hope is to grow nerve cells in the test tube with the symptoms of motor neuron disease, which causes nerves leading from the brain and spinal cord to degenerate.

Professor Shaw said that by turning embryonic stem cells from motor neuron patients into nerve cells, scientists will have a unique opportunity to understand the illness and how to treat it with new drugs.

Skin cells taken from patients with a family history of the disease will be cloned using human eggs that have had their own cell nucleus removed. This will help the scientists to identify any defective genes that may be implicated in triggering the disease, Professor Shaw said.

"We have spent 20 years looking for genes that cause motor neuron disease and to date we have come up with just one gene," Professor Shaw said.

"We believe that the use of cell nuclear replacement [therapeutic cloning] will greatly advance our understanding of why motor neurones degenerate in this disease without having to first hunt down the gene defect," he said.

Professor Wilmut denied at a press briefing in Edinburgh yesterday that he was "playing God" with human embryos. "I think that human beings have been changing the world around them for a very long time, in general to good effect," Professor Wilmut said.

"We all take for granted the very much healthier life that we have now compared with people 100 years ago and I think that the majority of people support this type of research," he said.

Brian Dickie, director of research at the Motor Neuron Disease Association, said that his organisation recognises that therapeutic cloning with human embryos raises deep ethical concerns.

"However, in principle, we endorse this research project on the basis that it is legal, has a sound scientific rationale and has the potential to bring us closer to treatments and ultimately a cure for motor neuron disease," Dr Dickie said.

Anthony Ozimic, political secretary of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, said: "Any licence to clone and kill strikes at the very heart of our society's basic rule for living together in peace, which is 'do not kill the innocent', because the cloning process kills many embryonic human children at their most vulnerable stage of life.

"All of those killed are unique, never-to-be-replaced, totally innocent human individuals. To treat or disguise human embryos as if they are nothing but raw laboratory material is both deceitful and disturbing," Mr Ozimic said.

- INDEPENDENT