A breath of fresh air from the BMA

This week's BioNews reports on news that the British Medical Association (BMA) has prepared a discussion paper for the forthcoming World Medical Association meeting which questions current objections to human cloning. The paper suggests that creating clones of existing people may not be as horrific as we might think. It also observes that people have children for a number of different reasons, many of which we might frown upon. But are reasons for having a cloned child really that different from reasons for having any child at all?

The British Medical Association has never been known for championing new medical technologies, particularly in reproduction and genetics. In the early days of IVF treatment, the BMA stood resolutely against research using human embryos, a view which it did not reverse until 1985, when the first test tube baby was already seven years old. It took a similarly dim view of surrogacy for many years until, in 1996, it issued guidance which recognised surrogacy as a reality.

To date, the BMA has chosen not to stray from received wisdom that cloning is wrong, damaging, unnatural and altogether undesirable. And since this is only a discussion paper, it may well retain that view. But let's have three cheers for the BMA for seeking to have this debate at all. For if anyone today dares to suggest that they think reproductive cloning might not be such a bad thing after all, they run the risk of being ousted from polite society. Let the debate begin!