...and the genetics debate hots up
As the UK government announced proposals to introduce legislation to ban human cloning in the country, several leading scientists have spoken out on the issue. Lord Winston claimed prior to opening the sixth annual meeting of the Human genome organisation (HUGO) in Edinburgh, Scotland, that the most important task was to engage the public on the issue of genetics. '[We need] to explain what is a very complex subject to the public, and to engage it and bring it on-side,' he said. The meeting, which will be attended by 800 scientists, has an agenda which focuses heavily on the role of ethics and privacy in genetics. The same circumspect attitude is not shared by Nobel Prize winner James Watson, dubbed the 'father' of DNA following his discovery of the structure of DNA with two other scientists for which they received the 1962 Nobel prize. He has called for laws to allow genetic engineering of human sperm and eggs. He claims that the genetic tests available at present can only warn of impending difficulties, but cannot solve them. 'Who wants to know for sure they will contract a disease for which there is no cure? Banishing genetic disability must therefore be our primary concern...I strongly favour controlling our children's genetic destinies,' he said, speaking in an interview with 'The Independent' newspaper. Experiments with cloning have proved to have a low success rate (for example more than 277 embryos were implanted before Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned). This may have been one of the factors that led Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists who worked on the Dolly the sheep project, to claim that attempts to clone human beings at the current time would be 'dangerous and irresponsible'. The UK will be joining the other 12 countries and four US States which so far are the only ones in the world to have legislation specifically banning human cloning. On the other hand, senators from two political parties in Belgium have recently submitted draft legislation allowing the country to carry out human cloning to help in scientific research. Belgium presently has no legislation on the issue. is à la c
Kraje
United Kingdom