“Immoral” not to clone, says Dolly’s creator
Professor Ian Wilmut, the Scottish scientist responsible for creating the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, has applied for a licence to clone human embryos as part of his research into motor neuron disease. It is difficult to study the disease in patients, so he plans to create embryos which have the disease, experiment on them, and destroy them after a few days. “Because at this early stage the embryo does not have that key human characteristic of being aware, to me it would be immoral not to take this opportunity to study diseases,” he told the BBC.
A spokesman for the charity Life UK, Patrick Cudsworth, criticised Professor Wilmut’s decision. “The fact that he does so under the banner of so-called therapeutic cloning makes no difference whatsoever to the fact that a human being is being deliberately created and then destroyed,” he commented.
- Prescribe morning-after pills to young teenagers, say US pediatric group - November 30, 2012
- Bahrain sentences protest docs to prison - November 28, 2012
- Terry Pratchett assisted suicide documentary wins International Emmy - November 27, 2012
More Stories
The FDA finally approved Elon Musk’s Neuralink chip for human trials. Have all the concerns been addressed?
Since its founding in 2016, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has had the ambitious mission to build a next-generation brain...
You shed DNA everywhere you go – trace samples in the water, sand and air are enough to identify who you are, raising ethical questions about privacy
Human DNA can be sequenced from small amounts of water, sand and air in the environment to potentially extract identifiable...
Are Dutch doctors too willing to euthanise people with autism and intellectual disability?
Will legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide lead to unnecessary deaths because of an able-ist bias against intellectual disability and autism?...
Euthanasia in Quebec: seamless service at a friendly funeral parlour
In Quebec, the number of cases of euthanasia has risen from 63 in 2015-2016 to 3663 in 2021-2022. Nowadays many...
Against commercial-assisted suicide
The journal Bioethics recently published an attack on commercial assisted suicide (CAS). The author, Yoann Della Croce, condemns it as...
Norway to export sperm
Danish sperm banks have grown into a successful export industry. Now Norway seems to be following the same path. The...