To clone or not to clone

If these safe and ethically uncomplicated adult stem cells from the back of your nose are as good as these scientists say, the whole case for cloning has been rendered “redundant and impractical” as Mackay-Sim told the Lockhart Committee (submission LRC-217). Lockhart’s proposals on cloning have no scientific justification if this key claim of researchers like Mackay-Sim is correct.

So let’s not be fooled twice by embryo experimenters, now would-be cloners, who need another round of public funding for their redundant science. Do not neglect the one area of endeavour which really is going to get cures for people, in an entirely safe and ethical way.

The public has been taken for too long a ride on embryos and cloning, being sold false hope and fake science in exchange for their tax money - whether Trounson’s misleading “white-rat” stunt played to our politicians in 2002, the systematic hype over miracle cures (now regretted by at least one leading scientist) in order to gain access to embryonic raw material, or the unravelling and astounding fraud perpetrated by the revered world-first human cloner, Woo Suk Hwang.

The time has come for honest science and bedrock moral principle to prevail. We must say “no” to the cloning and killing of dehumanised offspring proposed by the Lockhart Committee, and “yes” to the clinically magnificent and ethically innocent field of adult stem cell science.