Perhaps 10am ­ thus making way for more viewer-friendly programming, like Jack Whittaker Writes A Huge Cheque to Charlie Courtauld? Now there’s a programme I’d like to see.. Of all the advances made in recent years by medical applications of genetics, the one that has promised most controversy is the cloning of human beings. Troubled debate about the prospect of such a development was sparked when the Italian doctor Severino Antinori recently claimed that one of his patients was pregnant with a cloned foetus. But reports that human cloning hasresulted in a birth are causing a worldwide explosion of ethical concern. To many, the idea of human cloning seems a profound violation of the sanctity of human life.

Now that it is alleged to have happened, the calls for it to be banned are growing fast.
The alleged clone is a little girl called Eve, and she was born to a 31-year-old American woman by Caesarean section on the day after Christmas. Her name and the timing of her birth are unquestionably intended as significant gestures. The cloning is claimed by a company called Clonaid, owned by a religious flying-saucer sect called the Raelians. They believe that humankind came to Earth from civilisations elsewhere in space, and for them the use of all forms of technology, including reproductive technology, is seen not as an insult to whatever they worship, but as the fulfilment of a mission. There is only one certainty about what might come out of the furore over Eve, and that is that our unpreparedness for ever-swifter developments in medical genetics will increase confusion and lead to bad laws prompted by emotion alone.

Already, there are calls for human cloning to be banned outright, mainly from people and organisations already committed to the view that human reproduction should remain as close to the chance character of mammalian conception and birth as possible.To clarify what is at stake one has first to separate questions of practicality from those of principle. Both matter, but the latter are crucial for the long-term future of genetic medicine, and therefore humanity itself The question of practicality is an easy one. There are two kinds of cloning, one for purely therapeutic purposes where cells are reproduced to provide a therapy for degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and others. Embryonic cells are used as a basis for reproducing genetic material from a host, although stem cells from adults can also be used. In therapeutic cloning there is no intention of producing another human being Reproductive cloning has this latter aim in view. There is no guarantee that it is safe and reliable; on the contrary, the health of the world’s first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, suggests that clones might suffer premature ageing and a variety of genetic disorders. On the scanty evidence available, some specialists predict serious complications and an early death for baby Eve if she is a clone.

While so many unknowns surround cloning, the use of the technique for human reproduction cannot be right. Therapeutic cloning, by contrast, offers a powerful new weapon in the battle against human suffering, and promises powerful treatments for presently incurable and often devastating conditions. Certain groups oppose even this form of cloning because it involves “harvesting” embryonic cells produced for the purpose. Anti-abortion groups are hostile to anything that interferes with natural (for some this means “god-given”) reproductive processes.