British scientists said today they had been granted permission to clone human embryos for medical research in what is thought to be the first such licence given in Europe.
Researchers at the University of Newcastle in northern England will be allowed to create embryos as a source of stem cells to cure diseases after being given permission by the government's regulator, a spokeswoman for the university said.
The go-ahead was given by Britain's reproduction regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
"It has taken a year of work, and I am most pleased that the HFEA has recognised the potential of this technology in modern medicine," Newcastle University's Dr Miodrag Stojkovic said in a statement.
The scientists said they plan to duplicate early-stage embryos and extract stem cells from them with the aim of developing new treatments for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.
The embryos will be destroyed before they are 14 days old and will never be allowed to develop beyond a cluster of cells the size of a pinhead.
Cloning to create copies of human babies is outlawed in Britain, but therapeutic cloning is legal.