Cloning of babies can go ahead, court rules

Nothing can stop scientists in Britain from legally cloning a human baby, according to a High Court judgment yesterday contradicting earlier Government assurances that cloning is banned.

The ruling, by Mr Justice Crane, has thrown into chaos the rules on human cloning, causing the Department of Health to promise emergency legislation specifically banning the creation of cloned babies.

ProLife Alliance, the anti-abortion pressure group that sought the High Court ruling, said it had won an important victory in exposing the "lie" that the Government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has the power to snuff out any possibility of human cloning.

Bruno Quintaville, director of ProLife Alliance, said: "There are no safeguards to stop any form of cloning in this country.

"The HFEA has no power to stop it. It isn't a criminal offence and there is nothing that any public authority can do. The law as it stands is hopeless," he said.

The judgment centres on the definition of an embryo in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which governs all "test-tube" baby treatment and research involving sperm, eggs and human embryos outside the body.

The Act says an embryo is "a live human embryo where fertilisation is complete". However, the definition was drawn up before the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep, who was created by the transfer of a cell nucleus from an ordinary "somatic" skin cell into an unfertilised egg.

Mr Justice Crane ruled that an organism created by cell nuclear transfer is not an embryo and therefore not covered by the Act and the licensing system operated by the HFEA.

This contradicts a 1998 report into cloning by the HFEA and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission, which said that the Department of Health and the HFEA had taken legal advice on this issue. "Both ministers and the Authority ... are content that the Act does allow the HFEA to regulate nuclear replacement into an unfertilised egg," the report said.

The Department of Health said that it was considering an appeal against the judgment and will now bring forward legislation that will specifically ban reproductive cloning, where a cloned embryo is implanted into a womb to create a pregnancy.

The HFEA said the ruling did not affect the use of embryonic stem cells taken from spare embryos created by fertilisation of sperm and egg. However, the creation of cloned embryos for therapeutic stem-cell research would not now come under its jurisdiction.

Austin Smith, one of the few scientists licensed to work on embryonic stem cells, said the Government should ban reproductive cloning. "I hope the Government will act speedily to take whatever action is necessary to completely outlaw reproductive cloning whilst preserving the capacity for medical researchers to pioneer new treatments," he said.

David King, of the watchdog group Human Genetics Alert, said: "We are horrified to find that human cloning would be legal in the UK, and shocked that the Government gave the public false reassurances."

Sir Brian Heap, the vice-president of the Royal Society, said: "Both Houses of Parliament have signalled their approval for the principle of allowing licensed research into embryonic stem cells using cell nuclear replacement. This should be respected by any proposed new legislation."