Britain Urged to Legalize Cloning of Human Tissue

LONDON — Britain should legalize the cloning of tissue from human embryos in the hope of treating intractable diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancer, a government advisory committee said in a report published Tuesday.

The panel of experts supported Britain’s existing ban on cloning babies--creating a human the way scientists created Dolly the sheep--but pointed to the lifesaving potential of cloning human tissue and even organs for therapeutic uses.

“Although such applications are still some years away, we believe that it would not be right at this stage to rule out limited research using such techniques, which could be of great benefit to seriously ill people,” said Colin Campbell, chairman of the independent Human Genetics Advisory Commission.

The British recommendation is expected to influence similar debates in the United States, American officials said.

Tuesday’s announcement drew praise from other scientists but protests from antiabortion groups--and calls for a pause from critics who believe that things are moving too quickly in the fast-developing science.

“Like the majority of people in Britain, I am uneasy about the deliberate creation of cloned human embryos that are made to [be cannibalized] for human tissue,” said Patrick Dixon, author of “Futurewise,” a book about the dangers of unrestrained research.

Dixon called for a moratorium on human cloning to allow for more public debate.

But government officials said the licensing of research into cloning of tissue is still a couple of years away in Britain. If government ministers approve the panel’s findings, they will draft legislation that will then have to be approved by Parliament.

The recommendations were presented in a joint report by the genetics commission and the government’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which licenses fertility clinics. In January, the government asked for their advice on the legal and ethical ramifications of cloning in response to the birth of Dolly--the first cloned mammal--who was created from a cell of an adult sheep.

The antiabortion group LIFE condemned Tuesday’s report, warning that human embryo cloning for medical research was the first step toward producing full-term cloned babies.

The Evening Standard newspaper, however, said the scientists had come to “a sensible compromise on this most awkward of issues” when they decided that baby cloning was unacceptable but found that research on cloned tissue was a reasonable use of new knowledge that could save lives.

“Religious absolutists will continue to say that because the techniques involved in both processes [are] basically identical, research in this field should stop altogether, but they have no more right to dictate policy than scientists who argue that all research in pursuit of knowledge is valid,” the newspaper said.

The cloning of human babies has been banned in Britain since 1990 under a law on fertilization and embryology. The commission said Tuesday that because technology is developing so quickly, the government may want to toughen the law with explicit legislation banning reproductive cloning regardless of the technique used.

“It is quite clear that human reproductive cloning is unacceptable to a substantial majority of the population,” Campbell said. “A total ban on its use for any purpose is the obvious and straightforward way of recognizing this.”

But Campbell said he thinks that the issue of cloning has been distorted in the public’s mind by “Brave New World” scenarios. “The basic issue is to try to tackle human diseases that have so far escaped doctors,” he said. “The promise of genetics is much more important than scare tactics.”

In Britain, embryos less than 14 days old may be used for research on treatment of infertility and congenital disease, but not for studies on developing replacement tissue.

The scientific panel said tissue cloning could be helpful in treating people with brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and various types of cancer. One day, scientists may be able to grow cells to create human skin for grafts, heart muscle to repair damage from heart attacks, or replacement organs that are entirely compatible with the immune system of the recipient.

“The British are in effect half a step ahead of us,” said Alexander M. Capron, a member of the U.S. government’s bioethics commission.

In the United States, federal law forbids the use of public funds for any research that uses human embryos. A federal advisory commission recently concluded that cloning techniques using adult cells are acceptable for research as long as they are not used to create a human. Despite much talk about the subject, most scientists agree that the technology for actual production of a human clone will not exist for many years, if ever.

Now, at President Clinton’s urging, the U.S. commission is weighing the more troubling issue of whether embryo “stem cells” should be used in cloning and whether it is acceptable to fuse human and animal cells.

Tissue cloning involves removing a cell from the skin of a human being and fusing its nucleus into a human egg from which the nucleus has been removed, according to a spokesman with the British fertility authority. The embryo is left in a test tube to grow the stem cells--basic cells with the potential to develop into any tissue in the body.

The 50-page cloning report was produced after four months of consultations with religious, scientific, legal and lay groups and individuals. The recommendations had not been expected until next year but were released early, reportedly at the request of government ministers who have come under pressure from biotechnology companies to define the rules for cloning.

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Times staff writer Robert Lee Hotz in Los Angeles contributed to this report.