MIT professor slams Harvard’s stem cell bid
An MIT biotechnologist has pleaded with Harvard University not to pursue plans to do therapeutic cloning. Associate Professor James Sherley wrote in the Boston Globe that “adult stem cell research is predicted to beat the pants off human therapeutic cloning research when it come to yielding significant advances in cell medicine.” Given the unresolved debate over whether the research is ethical, he argues, “no reviewing body could, in good faith, approve it”. Prof Sherley also argued that the moral argument for therapeutic cloning was self-contradictory. At least reproductive cloning (which he staunchly opposes) creates life, while therapeutic cloning destroys it.
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