A PARLIAMENTARY committee in Australia, one of the powerhouses of stem cell
research, last week recommended a ban on creating embryos for research only and
a ban on human reproductive cloning.
But the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and
Constitutional Affairs won many researchers’ support by giving them the go-ahead
to extract stem cells from spare IVF embryos.
And its report also specifically states that the creation of cloned embryos
by nuclear transfer could be excluded from the ban on the creation of embryos,
although the committee has called for a three-year moratorium in the meantime.
That means the door is still open for “therapeutic cloning”—growing
compatible tissues for transplant from stem cells taken from cloned embryos.
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The committee’s recommendations are important for stem cell research because
Australia is home to some of the world’s top stem cell researchers, as well as
10 of the 60 or so existing stem cell lines. But not everyone is happy. One of
the most promising ways to develop new drugs is to test them on stem cells from
cloned embryos created with the cells of people with heritable disorders, says
Peter Mountford, chief executive of Stem Cell Sciences of Melbourne. “In three
years’ time, we’ll be three years behind the UK, and three years further than
necessary from useful therapies,” he says.
State and federal lawmakers are expected to rely heavily on the committee’s
recommendations. If implemented, they would make Australia more permissive than
the US, where President Bush supports legislation to outlaw therapeutic cloning.
Britain, however, specifically allows creation of cloned human embryos for
research into therapeutic cloning.