Confusion over cloning

It has just been announced that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has granted a licence to the Roslin Institute in Scotland to derive stem cells from human embryos. This is a first for the Institute which has, until now, concentrated its efforts on farm animals.

Roslin's intentions to start research on human embryos has been the subject of much speculation over the past few months. In April, Professor Ian Wilmut, joint head of the Department of Gene Expression and Development at the Roslin Institute, said that he would like to move towards creating cloned human embryos for research purposes. The new HFEA licence does not permit the creation of cloned embryos. However, with the level of media coverage given to Roslin's announcement that it would like to take stem cells from cloned embryos, it's easy for the public to get confused over exactly what has been permitted.

A recent study of the way the media reports on cloning and stem cell research, carried out at the Cardiff University School of Journalism, suggested that confusion reigns in the public mind. The study looked at the media coverage of cloning and stem cell research (as well as climate change and the MMR vaccine) over a seven month period, asking questions of 1000 members of the public at the beginning and the end of the period. It found that whilst there were more stories about cloning and stem cell research than there were about the other two issues, people were not confident that they understood the science involved. The study also detected 'widespread ignorance' of government policy in this area. Only 28 per cent of people questioned knew that the House of Lords had recently permitted the creation of cloned embryos for research.

Looking back over the past few years of cloning and stem cell research regulation, it's not at all surprising that the public is confused. The first discussion of regulating embryonic stem cell research to develop therapies started in December 1998, when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) published recommendations for a change in the current law. Those changes weren't passed in the UK parliament until January 2001, when the House of Lords voted on an amendment to allow embryonic stem cell research for therapeutic purposes. However, no research licences were granted until a House of Lords select committee had examined the issue and published its findings in February 2002. But that wasn't the end of the matter. The legality of the creation of cloned embryos for research was not finalised until another announcement from the House of Lords, this time from the law lords, that a judicial review claiming that the HFEA had no jurisdiction over cloned embryos, was defeated in March 2003. Only then could we be sure that the regulation of stem cell research and human cloning was clear and unambiguous. Expecting the public to keep abreast of these complicated regulatory developments is asking rather a lot.