Stem cell news reawakens debate, especially in US

News that scientists in South Korea have managed to clone human embryos and to derive stem cells from one of them has unsurprisingly generated much debate about the politics, law and ethics of human cloning. South Korea has already passed a law prohibiting cloning for reproductive purposes; now the scientists involved have called on other national governments to do the same. This is not the first time the issues have arisen: for example, consideration of an international treaty on cloning, by the General Assembly of the United Nations, was put on hold for a year in December 2003. Later this year, the UN will consider two measures: one to ban all forms of cloning and the other to allow cloning for research purposes to go ahead.

In particular, the news from South Korea has reignited debate about whether such research should be permitted in the US, which currently has no federal laws governing cloning science. A bill banning all forms of human cloning - for either reproductive or therapeutic purposes - was passed by the House of Representatives last year. The bill, along with another competing bill to ban human reproductive cloning only, was introduced to the Senate, but they never went to a vote. Similarly, two previous competing measures died after debates in 2002. Lawmakers in the US have now called for a ban on cloning to be reintroduced. In addition to the lack of federal guidance on cloning in the US, President Bush issued strict rules on embryonic stem cell (ES cell) research in August 2001, saying that it could only take place on ES cell lines already in existence at that time. This bars the use of federal funds by US stem cell researchers, meaning that scientists working in the US must either be privately funded or work on one of only a few ES cell lines available to them. Dr John Gearhart, one of the first scientists to isolate human ES cells in 1998, likened the US to 'an 800 pound gorilla being forced to sit on its hands', adding 'those of us in this field really feel we're being compromised as we train smart people who then go back home and perform experiments we can't do'.

But according to Leon Kass, chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, 'the age of human cloning has apparently arrived'. He said that he believed it would be inevitable that 'today [we would have] cloned blastocysts for research, tomorrow, cloned blastocysts for baby making'. In his opinion, he said, the only way to stop reproductive cloning from taking place in the US would be 'for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on human cloning'. A spokesman for the US National Institutes of Health committee overseeing ES cell research said 'the administration has stated very clearly that it is opposed to therapeutic cloning', adding 'that prohibits us from supporting that research'.

In the meantime, news that a 'sixth' cloned baby created by Clonaid has been born in Sydney, Australia, has been swamped by the South Korean achievement. Clonaid, linked to the Raelian religious cult, hit the headlines at Christmas 2002, when it claimed the first human cloned baby, which they called 'Eve', had been born. Almost immediately afterwards, the group claimed that four other cloned babies had been born, but it has never produced any evidence that these babies exist. The latest claims have been dismissed by the Australian government and, in the absence of any proof, have 'been widely dismissed as fraudulent'.