People might not like the idea of human cloning but they can be ambivalent about it, according to the chairwoman of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, which formulates opinion on this issue for the European Commission.
It is usually rejected out of hand by most, Mrs Noelle Lenoir said, but for the individual unable to have a child it might offer the only alternative to remaining childless. She is unreservedly opposed to the application of cloning technology to humans, however.
"If people begin to accept that, then we will be finished," she said. Prohibiting human cloning would be for "the protection of humankind rather than the individual".
"We are on the brink of manipulating life," she said during a visit to Dublin to address a Royal Irish Academy conference on bio-ethics. During a break at the event, she described the significance of work being done by the committee in formulating a European approach to bio-ethics.
"Ethics has to try to convince people that there are not only individual problems," she said. It would have to be applied on as broad a basis as possible, in much the same way as was the common law, with individuals then working within this framework.
This contrasted with the US approach where bio-ethical questions were being answered on a case-by-case basis, with the courts grappling with the issues in each as though it were the first time they had been seen. In Europe the idea was to search for a compromise that balanced the common good with the rights of the individual.
Mrs Lenoir is a member of the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest authority in administrative affairs, and a member of the Conseil Constitutionnel, the highest body considering constitutional matters. She has been president of UNESCO's international committee on bio-ethics since 1992.
She was well aware public concern about genetic technologies was at an all-time high in many European states, she said, but this was not necessarily a bad thing. It forced companies and the safety authorities to justify why they were introducing new technologies and allowed debate to take place.