BRITAIN: Critics of a decision by a House of Lords committee yesterday to approve cloning human embryos said it could be the start of a "slippery slope" toward reproductive cloning.
The controversial decision by the Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research means scientists will soon be able to start cloning embryos for research on stem cells - which differentiate into hundreds of other cells - which they believe will increase understanding of conditions such as Parkinson's Disease and offer possible cures.
The committee said cloning of embryos up to 14 days old should be kept to a minimum and "surplus" embryos remaining after IVF treatment and donated for research should be used wherever possible.
The committee's chairman, the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Rev Richard Harries, said that on the scientific evidence before it, "research on adult stem cells has not, as some claim, made research on embryonic stem cells unnecessary."
The British Medical Council (BMC) endorsed the committee's decision, saying the research offered "real hope" to millions of patients.
But critics dismissed the committee's reassurances that the research would be carried out under strictly controlled conditions as "pussy-footing words".
Mr Peter Saunders of the campaign group, Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF), said: "This new research is unethical because it uses human embryos as a means to an end, by cannibalising them to produce stem cells... once cloned embryos exist, theoretically all that is needed to produce human clones would be to implant them in a womb, a technique that is simple to perform and impossible to police."
Patrick Smyth adds from Washington:
The US has proposed at the UN a "global and comprehensive" ban on human cloning and experiments using human embryos. In August, France and Germany proposed a treaty that would prohibit the cloning of babies but permit the harvesting of stem cells for research, but the US argued it did not go far enough and proposed its alternative on Tuesday.