Backing For Baby Cloning to Beat Disease

A proposal to create babies that are both cloned and genetically altered to prevent serious hereditary disease is outlined today by the leader of the team that created Dolly the sheep.

Prof Wilmut writes: "Doctors should be able to offer at-risk couples the opportunity to conceive with IVF methods, break down the resulting embryos into cells, correct any serious genetic defects in these cells then clone demonstrably healthy cells to create a new embryo that can be implanted to start a pregnancy."

The resulting child would be the identical twin of the original embryo but would have the diseased gene corrected in every one of its cells. The original embryo would be discarded.

"I am extremely concerned about the effects on a child of being a clone of another person and I oppose it. However, an early embryo is not a person and I see the use of nuclear transfer to prevent a child's having a dreadful disease as far less controversial."

(If they discard the original embryo it would die which would be the same thing as going against God's commandment of "Thou shalt not kill.")

FULL STORY at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/05/nclone05.xml