Cloning as end result `an ethical no-no'

There are valid reasons to pursue aspects of human cloning research, but human cloning as an end result is an ethical "no-no", according to a Cambridge University embryologist.

Dr Anne McLaren, also a member of the EU's ethics committee on biotechnology, was speaking yesterday in Dublin at the genetics conference organised by Trinity's department of genetics. "The biggest ethical issue of all is safety," Dr McLaren said.

Only 2-3 per cent of the experiments which have led to cloned sheep, cows, goats and mice were successful and failures included many deformed and unviable foetuses. She said this would be unacceptable in a human context. "Even if people wanted to clone humans it would be a total `no-no' because of safety reasons."

Scientists however, were assessing the possibility of using the techniques involved in cloning to acquire embryonic cells that could be used against disease. A person's cells would be used to create an embryonic clone from which copies of their stem cells could be got and used to restore damaged tissues.

Earlier, Prof Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College, London, said it was "foolish for people to say there is no ethical dimension" to our increasing ability to diagnose genetic disease in the foetus.

As our knowledge increased so did our ability to diagnose future genetic illness and we might in time learn the date of our death coded in our genes. There were questions, he said, about whether a person should be told about their genetic fate. "The decisions we make are not scientific ones, they are societal ones."

Scientific knowledge was "value-free" and as such carried no ethical consequences, said Prof Lewis Wolpert, professor of biology at University College London. "It is neither good nor bad, it is just the way the world is." How such knowledge was applied, however, had immediate ethical consequences. "It is one thing to know how to clone, but another thing to try to do it."