UK Court of Appeal agrees CNR clones are embryos

LONDON — Clones produced by cell nuclear replacement (CNR) can be classified as embryos, so they are covered by current regulations on cloning, the UK Court of Appeal ruled last week. The three judges allowed a government challenge to a High Court decision made in November 2001 which ruled that cloning based on CNR was not covered by legislation and so could, in fact, be carried out without breaking the law as it stood.The argument revolves around the technical definition of what constitutes an embryo. The original High Court ruling in November 2001 — now challenged by the government — upheld a claim by a political party "campaigning for absolute respect for innocent human life", Prolife Alliance. The organization argued that organisms created by CNR — the technique that resulted in the early human clones created recently in the US, and previously in Dolly the sheep — were not embryos, because they were not created by the fertilisation of an egg by a sperm. In CNR, the nucleus from one cell is transplanted into an unfertilized egg from which the nucleus has been removed. Prolife Alliance warned that this meant that human embryos created by CNR fell outside the protection of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.In the original High Court ruling, Mr Justice Crane agreed that organisms created by CNR were not embryos as defined in the Act, so were not covered by its regulations. He argued that "CNR of the kind under consideration does not normally involve fertilization." Prolife Alliance warned that the ruling meant that human reproductive cloning based on CNR could potentially be carried out in the UK. The Health Secretary Alan Milburn immediately introduced the Human Reproductive Cloning Bill, which was rushed through Parliament in December 2001. This outlawed the placing in a woman's womb of any embryo not created by a fertilization process.The High Court judge granted leave to appeal against his decision, which has now been taken up by the government. A legal team acting for the government went before the Appeal Court on 16 January, and argued that CNR could be controlled under the 1990 Act. Kenneth Parker QC suggested that an organism created by CNR should be classified as an embryo. He argued that such an organism fell within the meaning of the 1990 Act, even if it was not the product of fertilization. "CNR creates an organism which is exactly the same as an embryo," he told the judges.Allowing the appeal, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, concluded: "I hold that an organism which is CNR (cloning) falls within the definition of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act." Scientific bodies supported this position. The President of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford, said: "The Royal Society welcomes today's admirably sensible and unanimous ruling by the Court of Appeal, which brings therapeutic cloning within the terms of the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act." He continued: "The Royal Society believes that the UK now has the right legislative framework to permit legitimate uses of cloning technology in research while outlawing any attempts to carry out human reproductive cloning. Any scientist who wants to use cloning technology to investigate the therapeutic potential of embryonic stem cells will now need a licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority."ProLife Alliance argued that the Court of Appeal's judgment "leaves the cloning law in complete disarray." The organization continued: "The ProLife Alliance has been advised that they have extremely strong grounds for appeal and a petition to the House of Lords will be submitted shortly." The debate — when is an embryo not an embryo? – looks set to continue in the UK.The regulations on cloning and the use of stem cells in research remain far from settled elsewhere. In Germany, two commissions offered conflicting advice in December 2001 and a decision as to whether researchers could import embryonic stem cells was delayed for a third time. The national research council in Sweden decided that current laws permitted researchers to both derive and work with embryonic stem cells.Meanwhile, in the US a panel from the National Academy of Sciences has recommended that scientists should be permitted to clone embryos in order to treat disease (therapeutic cloning) but that the research designed to create human clones (reproductive cloning) should be outlawed. Members of the panel disagreed with President Bush, who is opposed to cloning for any reason, and is supporting legislation about to go before the Senate to ban any type of cloning.The chairman of the panel, Irving Weissman, Professor of Cancer Biology at Stanford University, argued that to ban therapeutic cloning "would certainly close avenues of promising medical and scientific research." But the panel considered that reproductive cloning was unsafe, on the basis of research with animal cloning that has failed, resulted in animals that have died in the womb or that were born with serious deformities. "Human reproductive cloning should not now be practice," the panel argued. "It is dangerous and likely to fail." The panel called for a law to ban any research designed to clone human beings — a measure that the members could not recall ever having previously been applied to medical research. After hearing testimony from scientists who said they intended to try to clone a human being, the panel concluded: "No voluntary system that is established to restrict reproductive cloning is likely to be completely effective."

UK Court of Appeal agrees CNR clones are embryos

An Appeal Court ruling in the UK has clarified the law governing human cloning but pro-life campaigners will continue to test the regulations.

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of