Life After Death

created simply for harvesting human tissue. Today's development highlights the urgent need for Parliament to amend and restrict the 1990 Act. It is said that, in the long term, scientific advances in treating disease could be accelerated by the use of this technique. Even if this were true, it cannot justify doing what is wrong: We are dealing with human lives. This is surely another example of a line which should never be crossed. We may be being clever but are we being wise?" I repeat: we may be clever but are we being wise?

Human cloning is the production of a genetic copy of another human organism.

Cloning would be achieved by embryo splitting or by nuclear transfer.

Reproductive cloning would allow the human embryo to develop into a full copy of the donor. But therapeutic cloning would also require the creation of a human embryo. Cell differentiation, leading to continued foetal development, would not be permitted. The purpose would be to grow tissue or perhaps organs for transplant therapies. Both techniques require the manufacture of a human embryo. Growing a human clone for its limbs and organs is technological cannibalism. Alternatives exist. President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Committee has stated that, "because of ethical and moral concerns raised by the use of embryos for research purposes it would be far more desirable to explore the direct use of human cells of adult origin to produce specialised cells or tissue for transplantation into patients".

It is extraordinary that there has only been one debate held in the House of Lords in some private Member's time which I secured. There has been no debate at all in the House of Commons - quite an extraordinary indictment of the failure of MPs to grapple with ethical issues. Instead, policy has been made by four people, all of whom are scientists, and all of whom had expressed, previously at some point or another, support for human cloning. Just 200 submissions were made as part of their low key consultation, and they declined even to place a copy of the responses in the Library of Parliament. Early in 1999, Sir Colin Campbell resigned as Chairman of the Human Genetics Advisory Committee because he said that his commercial interests in an insurance company might lead to a conflict of interest.

But if that were right, and it was, how could a man like Dr George Poste - one of the gang of four - with his huge interests in Smith Kline Beecham, Cerebrus Limited and Dia Dexos, avoid a similar conflict of interest? Other members too had interests, and I passionately believe that we need to remove this debate from those who are too close to the industries, and who could gain from the procedures in which they are involved. These awesome questions need to be debated impartially and thoughtfully. Let us be clear what is at stake here. We are witnessing the creation of nightmare kingdoms, populated by a sub-species of human clones. This debate is about nothing less than what it means to be human.

We may be on the verge of committing species suicide. A whole range of sociological, psychological and scientific questions arise from this, apart from the ethical issues. Questions arise about the familial relationships between the cloned individual and the other members of his or her family, should reproducive cloning