U.K. SCIENTISTS ARE ALLOWED TO CLONE HUMAN EMBRYOS
The decision is likely to reignite an ethical debate on human therapeutic cloning as opponents fear it could be used to clone babies, which is outlawed in Britain.
In a procedure based on the same technique that created Dolly, the first cloned sheep, the scientists will create embryos as a source of stem cells to help develop new treatments for diabetes and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
They will duplicate early-stage embryos and extract stem cells from them. The embryos will be destroyed before they are 14 days old and will never be allowed to develop beyond a cluster of cells the size of a pinhead.
"This research should give valuable insight into the development of many diseases and benefit millions of patients," said Dr. Miodrag Stojkovic, a member of the team at Newcastle University in northern England. "It's not about cloning babies. To my knowledge, this is the first time in Europe that such a licence has been granted," he added.
Earlier this year, scientists in South Korea announced that they had produced the first human cloned embryos.
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