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Donaldson: “we need to proceed carefully”.

The British government has said that it needs more time before deciding whether to allow cloning techniques — such as the technology that produced Dolly the sheep — to be used on human embryos.

An expert advisory group, chaired by the government's chief medical officer Liam Donaldson, is to be set up to consider the risks and benefits of such research. The group will scour the literature and seek the views of research institutions to establish evidence for potential health benefits of the technology. Its findings will be presented early next year to the government and to the newly formed Human Genetics Commission.

The decision to set up the expert group is a response to calls for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990, which bans the use of cloning techniques on human embryos, to allow what is being described as “therapeutic cloning”.

The proposed changes to the law were suggested at the end of last year by the government's Human Genetics Advisory Commission (HGAC) and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the statutory body responsible for overseeing certain fertility treatments and human embryo research.

“When the 1990 act was passed, the beneficial therapeutic consequences that could potentially result from human embryo research were not envisaged,” the two organizations stated in a recent jointly issued report, Cloning Issues in Reproduction, Science and Medicine.

The HFEA/HGAC report calls for cloning techniques to be permitted on human embryos less than 14 days old for the development of treatments for mitochondrial disease, and for treatments for diseased or damaged tissues or organs.

But in its response to parliament last week, the government reiterated its opposition to cloning for reproductive purposes. It said it still needed to be convinced of the need for a change to the law to allow therapeutic cloning.

“It has been suggested that therapeutic cloning techniques might be able to provide immunologically compatible tissue for the treatment of degenerative diseases of the heart, kidneys and cerebral tissue, or repair damage to skin and bone,” said Tessa Jowell, the health minister. “We believe that more evidence is required for the need for such research, its potential benefits and risks, and that account should be taken of alternative approaches that might achieve the same ends.”

Donaldson says that the government is in no rush to proceed, since it recognizes that there is considerable public concern over issues such as cloning and research on human embryos. “We need to proceed carefully,” he says.

He dismisses claims that delays in licensing research on human embryos would drive British scientists to the United States. “I hardly think there'll be a brain drain in the next six months.” The government has rejected a suggestion in the HFEA/HGAC report to introduce legislation that specifically outlaws all forms of human reproductive cloning, choosing instead to review the matter in five years' time.

An official from the Department of Health says that the government sees no reason to change the law at present. This is partly because the prospect of successful reproductive human cloning remains uncertain, but also because it believes the existing law is strong enough.

The HFEA/HGAC suggestion was prompted because the law currently prohibits just one type of cloning — the nuclear substitution of any cell while it forms part of an embryo. The technique that was used to create Dolly involves nuclear transfer into an egg, not into an embryo. But both the HFEA and the government believe that the existing law is broad enough to prevent the use of nuclear transfer in an unfertilized egg.