Embryonic and Adult Stem Cells: Ethical Dilemmas

Abstract

"Dolly the cloned sheep has become an icon for biotechnology, with a characteristically post-modern ambivalence. She represents both the hopes and the fears of what embryology and genetics might led us to. The world's media and many of its leaders set offhares with fears that cloned human beings were just around the corner. In the Church of Scotland, we had already been discussing these issues with the Roslin scientists. We argued that not only would this be ethically unacceptable on principle, it would carry an unacceptably high risk of producing deformed babies. To most people's relief, the fear of human cloning has not materialised. The science has focused on the hopes that Roslin's Dolly technology and other breakthroughs could herald medical benefits. The UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990) allowed embryo research for limited purposes mainly for infertility, but in December 2000, MP's voted to allow research on human embryos as sources of stem cells for treating degenerative diseases."