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BRITAIN-CLONE Feb-9-2005 (660 words) xxxn
'Dolly' scientist's license to clone human embryos draws criticism
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A Scottish scientist's plan to clone and then destroy embryos from the cells of patients with motor neuron diseases represents an example of "inherently bad medicine" that should never be permitted, according to the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.
In a Feb. 9 telephone interview, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk criticized the Feb. 8 decision of the British Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority to grant Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, and other scientists a license to conduct therapeutic cloning for research into diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and progressive muscular atrophy.
As with any research leading to the destruction of human embryos, "it's a direct exploitation of the weak by the powerful, and that's never acceptable in a civilized society," Father Pacholczyk told Catholic News Service. "It should never be sanctioned."
Wilmut, who led the team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996, said his team and researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London planned to extract stem cells from patients with motor neuron disease and clone them in order to test various treatment options.
"Our aim will be to generate stem cells purely for research purposes," Wilmut told the BBC. "The eggs we use will not be allowed to grow beyond 14 days. Once the stem cells are removed for cell culture, the remaining cells will be destroyed."
Christopher Shaw of the Institute of Psychiatry said the team would "compare the behavior and chemical profile of neurons with the gene defect to those without" to learn about "the earliest events that ultimately lead to cell death."
Father Pacholczyk noted that approval of the Wilmut team's research marked the second time since the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority was created in 2001 that the panel had licensed therapeutic cloning in Great Britain.
The first license was granted in August 2004 to scientists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne who planned to use cloned embryos to create stem cells that produce insulin for transplant into diabetics.
But what is most disturbing about reaction to the more recent license, the priest said, is the suggestion that "this is going to allow them (in Britain) to get ahead of the United States."
"There's the competitive aspect, without actually stepping back and looking at the moral objections," he said.
In Great Britain, officials of church, ethical and pro-life organizations had similar reactions.
Helen Watt, director of the London-based Linacre Center for Healthcare Ethics, a Catholic bioethical institute, said it was extraordinary that destructive experiments on cloned human embryos could be permitted in a "supposedly civilized country."
"Research should be carried out by means which do not kill or exploit the human subject -- for example, adult stem-cell research, which is already giving rise to many working treatments," she said in a statement Feb 9.
Her sentiments were echoed by members of Britain's pro-life groups.
A spokeswoman for the public-interest group Comment on Reproductive Ethics said the new Wilmut-led research represents "a sad and extraordinary" about-face for the scientist, who in the years following Dolly's birth "assured the world he would never go near human cloning."
"Human cloning remains dangerous, undesirable and unnecessary," the spokeswoman added. "Alternative therapies and research with adult and umbilical-cord blood stem cells are already providing safe and ethical solutions in this field of medicine."
Anthony Ozimic, political secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said in a statement Feb 8: "Any 'license to clone and kill' strikes at the very heart of our society's basic rule for living together in peace, which is 'do not kill the innocent', because the cloning process kills many embryonic human children at their most vulnerable stage of life.
"All of those killed are unique, never-to-be-replaced, totally innocent human individuals," he added.
- - -
Contributing to this story was Simon Caldwell in London.
END
Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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