Britain Pro-lifers Row over Cloning License

The controversy over cloning has been reignited by the British government as it issued the second human cloning license to the Father of Dolly the Sheep on Tuesday. Scientists, pro-lifers, conservative Christians and patients are all ready to express their differing opinions, and a complicated debate is brewing across the world.

Pro-lifers and conservative Christians have generally two major concerns over the cloning of human embryos. First of all, a large number of human embryos will be created for experiments, but end up being destroyed in the laboratories, and so many say the dignity of these living human subjects is being threatened. Secondly, it is worrying that no scientist can guarantee a cloned human embryo will not eventually be implanted to be born.


The UK’s leading pro-life group, LIFE, stated in its press release, "It comes as no great surprise to us that Professor Wilmut has decided to expand his practice of the cloning of animals to the cloning of human beings. Although he has claimed that he is personally opposed to so-called "reproductive" cloning, it is important to highlight that there is no difference in the technique used to clone human embryos for research which he proposes, and cloning human beings to birth. The only difference is in the intended fate of the embryos created."

LIFE Research and PR Officer Patrick Cusworth said, "Everything about the developing human being is decided at the point of fertilisation- whether this occurs through cloning or through natural means. To take such early human life and to disembowel and cannibalise it (in the words of the German Reichstag who banned ALL forms of human cloning), is a profoundly dehumanising process, which lacks any form of medical ethics at all."[...]

LIFE calls on both the UK government and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to prove to the British public their much-publicised commitment to ethical standards in science and research, by banning all practices which involve the creation, manipulation and destruction of human life.

"Science must always exist to benefit humanity - not the other way round," it emphasised.


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