Christian social concern charity CARE also highly criticised the decision of HFEA. CARE’s Head of Public Policy Roger Smith, said, "Yet again the HFEA has shown complete disregard for the ethical dynamics of scientific research."
Smith added, "We have to remember that the clone is a human being in itself and that there is absolutely no technological distinction between reproductive and so-called ‘therapeutic’ cloning."
US’s largest association of faith-based physicians, the Christian Medical Association (CMA), even rebuked that Professor Ian Wilmut's plan to clone human beings for medical research is "a wolf in sheep's clothing."
"It's dressing a wolf in sheep's clothing to claim that you're somehow helping humanity when in fact you're killing living human beings," noted David Stevens, M.D., Executive Director of the 17,000-member CMA, "So-called 'therapeutic cloning' is hardly therapeutic for the living human subjects destroyed in the process."
To conclude the view of the pro-lifers and conservative Christians, therapeutic cloning is unethical, unreliable and unnecessary. The CMA cites up-to-date research in which embryonic stem cells are revealed to be unstable and unpredictable. At the same time, studies show that using non-embryonic stem cells, ethically and safely taken from umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, brain tissue and fat, have moved well beyond theory to application. Therefore, performing therapeutic cloning just for the harvest of stem cell is in fact unnecessary.
The UK’s pro-life group LIFE echoed, "We repeat our call to the British public that human cloning for any purpose is unethical, unnecessary, and dangerous. Human beings must never be used as a means to an end. To create a tiny new individual human being solely for the purposes of his or her own destruction is not something which we, living in a society which refers to itself as civilised, can justify."
LIFE calls on both the UK government and the 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.
