Human cloning

By Oliver Goggi

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THE House of Lords has voted in support of Government plans to legalise tests on stem cells, an area of research bringing hope to sufferers of Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's and cancer. The Government�proposal will allow embryos to be used for 'therapeutic cloning', which involves the creation of a gentically identical embryo from which stem cells are taken.

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Further to this, the Government has promised that it will introduce, 'as soon as possible', a Bill to ban 'reproductive cloning', a fear raised by those in opposition to the legislation. The ethical question surrounding the cloning of humans was raised by religious leaders and human rights activists who opposed the legislation. However, the minority of Lords voicing the opposition were out voted by 212 to 94.

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The new legislation makes therapeutic cloning legal on embryos less than 14-days-old. This pioneering medical technique removes stem cells from the embryo to culture them to such as number that they can be transferred into a dead or cancerous body tissue to aid re-growth and repair. As these stem cells multiply at such a rate they can be put into body tissue�that has been affected by any degenerative disease where one cell type has gone wrong or died,�such as in�Parkinson's when part of the brain slowly dies.

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Similarly in the future, new muscle could be produced to repair damaged hearts, new organs to replace ones killed by cancer, or the right bone marrow match in leukaemia cases.

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All this means that in the future medicine might concieveably do away with the need for a patient to wait for someone else's organ to become available to transplant into their body, and all the problems of rejection that come with it.

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It is concieveable that in the future such research could lead to each person having themselves cloned to produce a perfect match tissue for transplant. Some experts believe it may be possible one day to 'grow' whole replacement organs in the laboratory.

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