Members of the House of Commons decided by a vote of 366 to 174 to ease the rules to allow scientists to clone embryos up to 14 days old and use them for stem cells.
Stem cells are unprogrammed cells that researchers believe could revolutionize the treatment of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. What scientists want is to use the sort of cloning technology that produced Dolly the sheep.
But pro-life activists reacted with horror. The Most Rev. Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, described cloning, "even for therapeutic purposes," as "a new form of human reproduction with massive moral implications" that left him "gravely concerned."
In his attempt to stop the members of Parliament from relaxing the stiff rules of the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act, Peter Garrett, research director for the anti-abortion charity Life, said that "once you open the flood gates on the production of human cloned embryos, you are setting up the preconditions for full pregnancy cloning."
Garrett predicted that "we are only a couple of years away from cloning human beings."
But Dr. Michael Wilks, chairman of the British Medical Association's medical ethics committee, insisted that "carefully controlled, responsible embryo research has the potential to be of benefit to thousands of people with serious medical conditions."
In addition to leading to new treatments for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, researchers say, "therapeutic" cloning could give science the ability to cure diabetes and to repair damaged organs and mend spinal columns and limbs.
The fierce debate in the House of Commons ranged from fears that easing the restrictions could lead to selective human cloning to claims that it could mean an end to suffering "in all parts of the human spectrum."
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