British anti-abortion campaigners claimed legal victory yesterday in moves to reopen the debate on cloning. However, scientists warned that a ruling by the High Court in London could open the door for controversial fertility specialists to create human clones.
The court ruled that current laws did not cover the use of cloned human embryos for medical research and did not explicitly prohibit human reproductive cloning.
The Department of Health in London said it may appeal against the decision and was considering emergency legislation to ban human reproduction cloning.
The Pro-Life Alliance, which opposes all human cloning including therapeutic cloning to harvest stem cells, had challenged the government over its assurances that live birth cloning could not legally take place in Britain.
"The law as it stands at the moment is so full of loopholes and uncertainties that scientists could go right ahead and clone human embryos without any restrictions and without any possible sanction from the government," a Pro-Life Alliance Director, Dr Bruno Quintavalle, told the BBC.
Dr David King of the independent watchdog group Human Genetics Alert warned that the move could open the door for controversial Italian fertility expert Dr Severino Antinori to conduct experiments in Britain.
"We are horrified to find that human cloning would be legal in the UK and shocked that the government gave the public false assurances. Professor Antinori could start his cloning work in Britain today," Dr King said.