Britain defies consensus on human cloning

BY SIMON CALDWELL
Bk I FAIN this week became the first country in the world to pass a law that legalised the cloning of human beings for destructive experiments.
Unamendable emergency legislation was rushed through both Houses of Parliament last week in spite of profound concerns at the speed at which the Government was moving, voiced by MPs and peers of all parties.
By this Tuesday, the twoclause Human and Reproductive Cloning Bill required only the formal rubber stamp of Royal Assent to become law.
The Bill outlaws the implantation of cloned human embryos into a woman's womb, but does not forbid future technology which may allow cloned babies to grow in artificial wombs or in animals or men,
It conspicuously failed to refer to the cloning of humans for experimentation and research and critics say this deliberately left the whole area unregulated.
The Bill was pushed through the House of Lords on Monday last week and then completed all its stages in the House of Commons the following Thursday.
During the guillotine debates, Paul Marsden, Labour MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, revealed that the Government imposed a three-line whip on the "matter of conscience" in spite of the overwhelming majority it enjoys in the House of Commons.
The Government brought the Bill after the High Court last month sided with the ProLife Alliance and ruled that embryos created by cloning were not covered by regulations in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
It said it had to act to stop such maverick scientists as Italy's Dr Severino Antinori from exploiting loopholes in the law and using Britain as a base to clone babies.
Junior Health Minister Hazel Blears told the Commons: "The immediate concern of the Government is that no-one should think they can come to the UK to exploit the current situation where reproductive cloning is unregulated.
"Bringing this Bill forward reflects the concerns raised frequently by Parliament and the public about the importance of ensuring reproductive cloning cannot take place in the United Kingdom."
But Tory backbencher Ann Widdecombe, a Catholic, said: "The Government are seriously asking the House to believe they are in a terrible panic because an Italian is on his way and might do something nasty when he gets here. They have produced a Bill and demanded that we take it through all its stages in five hours, because they are terrified that we might try to amend it.
"They are especially afraid that some of us who have well-known moral objections might try to amend it for purposes other than cloning."
Addressing the deputy speaker, she added: "Will you, as guardian of the right of the House to hold the Executive to account, please examine the proceedings today with a view to ensuring that they can never be repeated?"
In Brussels, meanwhile, the European Parliament last week rejected the complete text of a report on genetics and human embryology, because it had been heavily amended in favour of allowing funding for destructive experimentation and research.
The original draft would have presented an obstacle to EU plans to spend £185 million on research on aborted embryos and those surplus to in-vitro fertilisation procedures.
On Friday, Pope John Paul II met Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, but did not address the issue during their 30-minute meeting.