Is human cloning unsafe or unethical?

This week's BioNews includes news from France that nuclear transfer technology may cause long-term health problems in the resulting clones. A team of scientists led by Jean-Paul Renard reported in the Lancet that a cloned calf, born after nuclear transfer from an adult skin cell, died of sudden anaemia seven weeks after birth. The team suggests that the illness arose from problems in the reprogramming of the cell after it was transferred into the donor egg cell.

The research raises important questions about the viability of cloning technology in animals. But the authors of the Lancet paper also suggest that their findings should be taken into account when thinking about whether human cloning should be allowed take place. Such indications of long-term health risks raise questions about the acceptability of creating human clones.

No doubt the French research will be grist to the mill of those who oppose all forms of human cloning. In the UK's House of Lords last week, anti-abortion and anti-embryo research campaigner Lord Alton was quick to remind Peers of the current dangers and inefficiencies of cloning technologies. Renard's research will surely be welcomed by Alton and his fellow anti-cloning campaigners. But just how useful are such findings in the debate about the rights and wrongs of human cloning?

Most people seem to be uncomfortable with the notion of creating human clones. But they feel this not because human cloning may prove to be unsafe for those born of such methods. Some feel uncomfortable about human cloning either because of the apparent strangeness of creating genetic copies of existing people or because they fear psychological damage to the resulting clone. Others have tried to develop ethical principles, although with limited success, which rule out human cloning as an ethically acceptable practice.

But whatever reason we might find for opposing the creation of human clones, it is unaffected by the safety of the cloning technique. If cloning is morally wrong, then it matters not a jot whether it is highly risky or as safe as the proverbial houses.

The truth is that we do not yet know whether human cloning will ever be a safe technique. Nor do we know whether those born of cloning techniques will be psychologically damaged as a result. All talk of the effects human cloning is pure speculation at present.

In the meantime, Lord Alton and friends will continue to blur the line between safety and ethics for their own ends. They will also use speculation about the safety of producing human clones to tarnish the reputation of more welcome activities such as the use of cloning technology to produce therapies for human illnesses.