From: http://www.theage.com.au:80/daily/981210/news/news18.html
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Thursday 10 December 1998
Legalise cloning: scientists
By DARREN GRAY
Melbourne scientists yesterday called for the cloning of human body parts to be legalised.
Their call comes only days before the Federal Government takes advice on how to deal with the controversial issue.
With British medical authorities set to allow research into cloned human tissue for transplants, the Health Minister, Dr Michael Wooldridge, next week will receive a report by the Australian Health Ethics Committee on human cloning.
Yesterday, Dr Bernadette Tobin, a committee member involved in the report,
would not reveal specific recommendations. But she said the report made
a distinction between the cloning of whole humans and
cloning human DNA and human cells.
The report also discussed the meaning of the term clone, three or four techniques that might be involved in the cloning of human embryos, and reasons for which researchers might wish to clone human embryos, she said.
A recent draft of the report also recommends that those states that do not have regulations covering assisted reproduction technologies put such laws in place.
Victoria is one of three states that have banned human cloning.
The deputy director of the Institute of Reproduction and Development
at Monash University, Professor Alan Trounson, said cloning had the potential
to treat serious medical conditions including paraplegia,
quadriplegia and Parkinson's disease.
"I'm terribly in favor of the work that would allow for the development of human embryonic stem cells and the cloning research to allow us to explore the potential of these new technologies,'' he said.
Professor Trounson and Professor Roger Short, a reproductive biologist at the Royal Women's Hospital, welcomed reports of the new British regulations.
Professor Short said: ``It's an enormously exciting development because we are going to be able to generate spare parts for people.''
Cloning techniques had the potential to save AIDS patients by generating blood cells free of HIV, he said. But the cloning of new individual humans was ``something abhorrent'', he said.
But the ethicist Mr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini said the cloning of human embryos was also shocking. ``What they are talking about is producing embryos that are damaged in some way or another.
``The whole prospect of Dr Strangeloves in laboratories creating embryos for the purposes of research is just horrifying.''
Australian medical research guidelines recommend human cloning be prohibited.
dan@southeast.net
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