Pro-lifers push for end to destructive experiments

BY SIMoN CALDWELL
A VICTORIOUS pro-life group this week demanded the full overhaul of the legislation that permits destructive experiments on human embryos.
The ProLife Alliance, which last week won its High Court case against the Government over Britain's regulations on human cloning. has called for a full review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
Mr Justice Crane had ruled that the Act referred only to embryos created by normal fertilisation and not to embryos cloned by cell nuclear replacement.
He decided that effectively there was no law governing cloned embryos.
The Government has since announced that it intends to appeal against the judgement and also aims to introduce emergency legislation into Parliament over the coming week to close the cloning loopholes that were exposed in the High Court.
The ProLife Alliance insisted that any short-cut solutions would fail to prevent even full reproductive cloning.
Spokesman Bruno Quintavalle said: "Any emergency legislation which attempts to ban only the implanting of cloned embryos and not the cloning procedure itself would be wholly inadequate.
"It will not succeed in banning live birth cloning and will be open to fresh legal challenge."
He said: "Government lawyers were forced in court to concede that under the current legislation cloned embryos would not be subject to the 14-day storage and experimentation limit.
"They were also forced to admit that no consent provisions would apply to the creation, storage or use of cloned embryos. Bringing experimental cloning under the governance of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 will involve wholesale revision of the Act, it cannot be achieved by rushed legislation.
"Pending this revision a total ban on cloning must be enacted, anything less cannot meet the problems exposed by Mr Justice Crane's judgement."
The ProLife Alliance sought a judicial review of the law as soon as the Government forced changes through the Houses of Parliament last December and January via an unamendable statutory instrument.
The House of Lords set up a select committee to examine the issues around "spare-part cloning" only after the law was changed.
The Government insisted that scientists should be allowed to use emerging new cloning technologies to pursue such potential benefits as cures to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
It also ignored evidence that other forms of stem cell research, such as that into adult stem cells, offered greater potential while not involving the creation and destruction of human life.
Only this Monday, three leading professors gave evidence to the Lords' Select Committee Enquiry into Stem Cell Research to show that embryonic stem cell experimentation was unethical, unnecessary and potentially dangerous.
Professor Neil Scolding, Dr Michael Antoniou and Professor David Prentice each argued that the existing scientific work with adult stem cells was far superior to that using stem cells derived from embryos.
The three also expressed grave fears that the legalisation of "therapeutic" cloning would lead to reproductive cloning.
Peter Garrett, research director for the pro-life charity, Life, said: "This new evidence is compelling.
"Members of both Houses of Parliament must take it into account when the Government tries to rush through emergency legislation this Thursday.
"It is now clear that Parliament should follow Lord Alton of Liverpool's suggestion and introduce legislation to ban all forms of cloning.
"After four years of misinformation, arm-twisting and time-wasting, the Government needs to make amends with a complete ban on all cloning."
Editorial — page nine