Motion on Therapeutic uses of cloning

Some exaggerated claims have recently been made for alternative sources of stem cells, for example from human adult cells or placental material. While recent advances in these areas are indeed encouraging, scientists are urging great caution over assuming universal therapeutic success with any one method, when these are still very early stages in research. One speculative means to produce stem cells may already be rejected on ethical grounds, however. This is the production of non-viable human embryos within cow's eggs. The idea would be to take a human cell and perform a nuclear transfer into a denucleated cow's egg. Passing an electric current would fuse the two and stimulate the human cell to divide as though it were a human embryo, but one which was not viable. At the blastocyst stage of division, the stem cells would be removed and cultured as human somatic cells. This raises many serious uncertainties and risks, not least whether the use of a cow's egg as a host for the human cell had no adverse effect on the eventual human cell lines. It would raise immense ethical problems. Even though it would avoid the creation of a human embryo, the mixing of human and animal genetic material at such a profound level would raise a major intrinsic ethical objection for many people.