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Britain Rejects Appeal on Human Cloning

Posted on: Thursday, 13 March 2003, 06:00 CST

By EMMA ROSS

LONDON (AP) -- The House of Lords on Thursday rejected an appeal by an anti-abortion group to overturn Britain's decision to allow human cloning for stem cell research.

The ProLife Alliance had argued that Parliament acted improperly when it passed new regulations under a 1990 act to permit cloning to create embryos for stem cell research. Parliament approved the new rules in January 2001.

The move, which was a global first, allowed scientists to create cloned embryos only for purposes of extracting stem cells for medical research.

The extraction, which is done when the embryo is a few days old, means the clones cannot develop into babies. The embryos are only allowed to be developed until they are 14 days old.

The ProLife Alliance sought a judicial review of the issue and won its case at the High Court in November 2001. The group argued that since cloning technology did not exist at the time the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act was passed, that law could not be used to authorize the later rules.

Opponents also said the embryos to which the 1990 act applied must be the product of fertilization. Cloning does not involve fertilization.

But the decision was overturned at the Court of Appeal a few months later and the group then took its fight on to the House of Lords.

The lords said even if Parliament had known of cloning at the time, it could not have intended in the 1990 act to distinguish between embryos created by different methods.

Five lords were on the panel and the dismissal was unanimous.

The ProLife Alliance, which opposes all cloning, sought to force the government to start from scratch, creating a second chance to defeat the legalization of cloning.

Many scientists believe stem cell research holds vast promise for treating an array of diseases from diabetes to Parkinson's.

They envision creating an embryo cloned from a patient so that stem cells extracted would be a perfect transplant match.

Prolife Alliance said at least it stopped human cloning for two years while its case was in court. The ruling means all applications for cloning can now go ahead.

"As the future horrors of cloning unravel, we will at least be able to tell the world that we tried to stop it," the group said.

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