Royal Society calls for moratorium on human reproductive cloning

LONDON The Royal Society —an independent body of scientists in the UK — has called for an international moratorium on human reproductive cloning, in a report published on June 20.The report was prepared in response to queries raised by the ongoing inquiry by a UK government body, the House of Lords Ad Hoc Committee on stem cell research. Richard Gardner, Henry Dale Research Professor of the Royal Society, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, chaired the working group that prepared the Society's evidence. He said: "There has been a lot of unchallenged publicity this year for groups who claim that they will clone human beings in the next few years. It is the Royal Society's view that this would be unethical and that responsible scientists across the world should not ignore the public's well-founded opposition to such research."The Society report proposed several scientific arguments against human reproductive cloning, explaining that the technique is very ineffective (with only a 1% success rate in mammals), unpredictable and results in a high percentage of foetal deaths. It pointed out that the great majority of nuclear transplants (cloned embryos) develop abnormally, with the very real danger of creating seriously handicapped individuals.Reproductive cloning is based on removing the genetic material from an egg and replacing it with the nucleus from another adult's cell. The egg would then be activated and allowed to develop right through to the embryo stage and on to a new individual. The resulting animal or person would have identical nuclear DNA to the adult who donated the nucleus. This has been achieved in animals — for example, Dolly the sheep — but not in humans.The group is supporting legislation to ban human cloning in the UK, and hopes this will influence policies in other countries. "A number of other countries have great respect for the UK regulatory system in this field, and aim to modify their laws accordingly," said Gardner. He considered that an international moratorium on human reproductive would have to be voluntary. The European Parliament Committee on Human Genetics is currently considering the issue at a European level.Other countries already seem to be adopting a similar approach to that advocated in the UK. The government in France adopted a draft law last week (20 June 2001) to ban human cloning in medical research. This decision followed months of debate and places tight restrictions on the use of frozen embryos — created during fertility treatment — for medical research. French president Jacques Chirac welcomed the legislation, and urged adoption of the law in parliament before elections due to be held next spring. He suggested that researchers in France should pursue other methods of advancing cell therapy.In the US, the White House believes that all forms of human cloning should be banned, whether for reproduction or for medical research. Claude Allen, deputy secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that President Bush and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson had made it clear that they opposed "any and all attempts to clone a human being." He was addressing members of a House subcommittee considering two bills that would restrict cloning. One bill would ban all forms of human cloning, while the second would restrict cloning intended to create a pregnancy but would allow cloning for other purposes, such as to create cell lines.Allen appeared to be opposed to both bills. He pointed out that embryos cloned for research could be used all too easily for reproductive purposes. "The administration believes it's in the best interest at this time to ban both research as well as reproductive cloning because the easy step that moves us across that line we all agree is reprehensible."In May 2001 the German government set up a 24-member National Ethics Council, including representatives from science, the church, business and labour organisations to discuss issues such as genetic research. The body will address 'areas of tension between great medical hopes, economic expectations and people's understandable fears of reproduction and selection.' Genetic research in Germany is hotly debated. Last year, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder criticised the decision in Britain to allow research using embryonic stem cells. Italy currently has the tightest restrictions in Europe, with a ban on stem cell research. The issue was raised during the recent Italian election, when Luca Coscioni, a Radical party candidate, called for a change in the law to allow stem cells to be used for medical research. However, the Catholic Church in Italy is vehemently opposed to this type of research, with one church leader arguing that "it represents … a murder of human individuals, even if at the embryo phase, and it represents a sort of human cannibalism."In the UK, the Royal Society supported the continuation of research on stem cells and therapeutic cloning — replacing the nuclear DNA in an egg with that from another individual's body cell, and activating development to the stage where embryonic stem cell lines — considering that these offer important benefits for society. The report addressed the recent debate about whether embryonic stem cells are still needed, after promising results with adult stem cells. Working group members argued that the different stem cells sources are not alternatives to each other and all should be further researched. "Adult stem cells are few in number and often difficult to access. With very few exceptions, adult stem cells will only be obtainable from organs obtained shortly after death," Professor Gardner pointed out. Stem cell research is progressing rapidly. It is now clear that these cells can be clonally propagated and genetically manipulated. Functional cardiomyocytes and neurons have been produced from embryonic stem cells. Further research has shown that adult bone marrow cells can be manipulated to develop into liver cells. But, the Royal Society report acknowledged that research with embryonic stem cells might increase the likelihood of human reproductive cloning, hence the need for an international moratorium.The working group supported the idea that human embryonic stem cell lines developed for research and therapeutic purposes should be derived and maintained as a public rather than private resource. The Donaldson Report recommended that the Research Councils set up and maintain a Stem Cell Bank — an idea that has been supported by the Wellcome Trust. "Such a bank could be run on a similar basis to the Human Genome Project, in that cell lines would be stored in the bank, available to the scientific community on a non-commercial basis and funding and ethical permission on stem cell research could be conditional on any lines being put in the bank," concluded Gardner.

Royal Society calls for moratorium on human reproductive cloning

has called for an international moratorium on human reproductive cloning.

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