Will legal loophole make the UK the first European host of human cloning?
A decision by the UK High Court on 15 November that human cloning activities are not covered under the country's existing legislation has prompted a controversial Italian fertility doctor to say that he plans to take advantage of this oversight and use the UK as the location for his planned human cloning treatment. The decision by the High Court ruled that an organism created by cell nuclear replacement is not an embryo and therefore not covered by the UK's 'Human fertilisation and embryology' Act, passed in 1990. Although the immediate reaction to the legal decision was for a call for the UK government to introduce emergency legislation, the Italian fertility specialist Dr Severino Antinori, who has made public his intention to clone human beings, said that he was heading to the country to begin his programme. 'This decision increases my chances very much,' he told the BBC. 'We want to begin a programme in the UK.' He was not deterred by the possibility of the UK government rushing through legislation, saying that he felt that two months would be enough to perform 'a lot of the programmes'. The chair of the UK's House of Commons science and technology select committee, Dr Ian Gibson MP, said that the decision highlighted the need for more tailored legislation. 'We now need clear and unambiguous legislation that regulates therapeutic cloning, because therapeutic cloning has a promising potential for treating chronic disease such as Parkinsons disease or heart failure. The government should at the same time clearly and firmly ban reproductive cloning, because of the many scientific, ethical and political problems associated with this practice,' he said. Dr Gibson's concerns were echoed by UK Health Minister, Lord Hunt. 'We had thought that it [human cloning] was outlawed by the 1990 Act. It appears that isn't the case and that's why we're giving urgent consideration to what needs to happen next,' he said, adding that the UK government remained totally opposed to human cloning. There are still further hurdles for Dr Antinori before he could carry out his activities in the UK. There would be no public money available for his programme, as the UK has a committee dedicated to oversee any project concerning cloning research. The same would apply to a mixed public/private project. Nor would Dr Antinori find it easy to line up a location that would be willing to comply with hosting his programmes. However, there is no pan-European back up legislation covering the activity for the UK, as it did not sign nor ratify either the Charter of Fundamental human rights, which bans human cloning, nor the Council of Europe's Oviedo declaration on human rights and biomedicine, which again bans the activity. A spokesperson for the European Commission also expressed surprise at the verdict, but said the Commission remains firmly against human cloning. The European Commission neither funds nor sanctions this type of activity, the spokesperson said. Dr Gibson was also surprised at the ruling, saying that 'the judgement was not concerned with morality at all, but with a technicality.'