BRITAIN: The scientist who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, has been granted a licence to clone human embryos for medical research.
Prof Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, plans to obtain stem cells for research into motor neurone disease (MND), a procedure that divides the medical world along ethical lines.
Britain's cloning watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), granted the licence yesterday to Prof Wilmut, Dr Paul de Sousa, from Edinburgh, and Prof Christopher Shaw, from King's College London. It is only the second such licence granted in Britain.
According to one expert, such research should be outlawed until the UN introduced a global ban on reproductive human cloning. Dr Donald Bruce said there was a "significant danger" that maverick scientists would misuse technology to clone babies.
The decision to grant a research licence to the Roslin Institute was also condemned by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) as "a licence to clone and kill".
However, Prof Wilmut's plan was welcomed by a leading charity and a famous sufferer of the incurable condition. The MND Association, whose patron is world-renowned scientist Prof Stephen Hawking, said the HFEA decision could "revolutionise" treatment of the disease.
Dr Bruce, of the Church of Scotland's Society, Religion and Technology Project, said the licence approval would have far-reaching implications.
"The decision to grant the Roslin Institute a licence to create cloned human embryos poses ethical problems beyond the strict legality of the proposed research.
"We commend the aim of the Roslin proposal, to produce cells which exhibit motor neurone disease for studying the causes of this awful disease, but is this reason enough to make cloned embryos?
"There is a significant danger that it would lead to the misuse of the technology by maverick scientists in some other country where there was little or no regulation, who wish to make and implant cloned embryos to create cloned babies, regardless of major risks and ethical objections.
"This is not a case of some future 'slippery slope' but something already probable. It is unwise to allow cloned embryo research until there is a United Nations ban on reproductive human cloning."
Prof Wilmut said: "Our aim will be to generate stem cells purely for research purposes. This is not reproductive cloning in any way."