Britain Pro-lifers Row over Cloning License to Dolly's Father

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.

This is the second time such a license has been granted in the UK despite the stern opposition of pro-lifers. In August, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was strongly criticised for authorising a group of scientist in the Newcastle University to perform cloning of human embryos, so called "therapeutic cloning".

This time, the license falls into the hands of Professor Ian Wilmut of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, who is the creator of the Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal in the world. Professor Ian Wilmut and the other two scientists are planning to perform the cloning of human embryos so that stem cells can be yielded to investigate a cure for muscle-wasting illnesses. The cloned human embryos will be destroyed afterwards.

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."

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.