UK GENETICS ADVISERS CALL FOR PUBLIC CLONING DEBATE

January 31, 1998

LONDON (AP) -- Authorities in Britain, where Dolly the cloned sheep was born, opened a public debate Thursday on where to draw the moral boundaries for human cloning.

The initiative by the Human Genetics Advisory Commission and the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority was prompted by the birth last February of Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal.

The achievement, produced by placing the nucleus of an adult sheep cell into an egg, which grew into a copy of the adult sheep, sparked worldwide concern about the evolution of the technology and whether it could lead to the production of genetically identical human beings. International organizations are moving to establish agreements banning human clones. U.S. President Bill Clinton has prohibited the sue of federal funds for human cloning and has sent a cloning prohibition bill to the U.S. Congress for consideration.

The British commission issued a consultation paper, outlining the issues and raising questions for debate, and said they would consult with scientists, philosophers, religious leaders and ethics groups. It is to take the issues to national groups and invite comment over the next three months. The commission then will recommend policy to the government.

The genetics commission makes a clear distinction between the cloning of babies to create living people and cloning of human embryos for therapeutic applications. While strongly opposed to reproductive cloning, which has been banned in Britain since 1990, the experts indicated it would be wrong to impose a blanket ban on all human cloning research.

A report published by the group Thursday said the "Dolly" techniques could have important therapeutic spin-offs, providing new insights into the origins of cancer and basic processes such as aging and cell differentiation.

No law exists barring cloning of embryos for medical research, as long as they are not replanted in the womb and are destroyed after 14 days, when a nervous system starts to develop.

But it will be years before regulators are satisfied there has been enough work on animals to allow experiments with human embryos, the commission said, noting that it took 277 attempts to create Dolly the sheep.

"I think what we probably want is to stop the wild and irresponsible notion of cloning whole human beings," said Sir Colin Campbell, chairman of the commission. "But we would like the scientific analogues, the procedures that might in five years' time lead to curing of diseases, to continue."

Nobody has yet applied for a license for such work, but applications could be considered on a case-by-case basis, said Ruth Deech, chairwoman of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, the agency that regulates research.

Chicago physicist Richard Seed announced earlier this month he plans to clone a person within 18 months. Seed has no medical degree, no laboratory backing and little money, prompting many warnings on the dangers of cloning research.