Human Embryo Experiments Set For Go-Ahead

A legal challenge to Britain’s first stem cell research licence is to go ahead.

It is a decision that will re-ignite the controversy over human cloning, and the move could have implications for a separate ruling expected today on the pioneers who created Dolly the sheep.

Campaigners had sought a judicial review of a decision in August last year by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to grant a team from Newcastle University the right to clone human embryos for medical research.

Peng Voong, a policy analyst for the Lawyers Christian Fellowship who brought the case, argued that the HFEA acted unlawfully in granting the licence and that the limited information it revealed about the application was "incomplete, misleading and extremely worrying."

Yesterday, David Foster, Mr Voong’s solicitor, said the judicial review only applied to the Newcastle licence granted by the HFEA, but that its outcome could have implications for future decisions, including its ruling on Professor Ian Wilmut, the scientist behind Dolly, the cloned sheep, which is expected today.

But the HFEA’s decision was greeted with anger by churches and pro-life groups.

Julia Millington of the ProLife Alliance welcomed the judicial review.

She said: "Human cloning is profoundly unethical, particularly when the cloned embryos are manufactured for their constituent parts and thereafter destroyed. We believe that this licence does not fulfil the conditions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act."



Read ahead