QUESTION: When is a human embryo not a human embryo? ANSWER: When it鈥檚 a
clone.
That was the memorable verdict of an English judge who last week became the
first person ever to rule on the legal status of human clones
(see 鈥淣o clones please鈥�).
Superficially, the ruling is easy to ridicule. If a cloned human embryo is not a
human embryo, then is Dolly the sheep not a sheep? And if a cloned human baby is
ever created, what type of organism will it be in the eyes of the law? In fact,
the judge has done us a service. He has exposed an embarrassing legal loophole
that would not only have made it difficult to prosecute anyone in Britain for
cloning a whole person, but undermined the right of the authorities to police
future research into therapeutic cloning.
The flaw is buried in the 11-year-old legislation ministers were relying on
to regulate human cloning. It defines an embryo as what you get when a sperm
fertilises an egg. But cloning needs no fertilisation, so by this definition a
cloned embryo is not an embryo and is not protected by British law.
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It should never have come to this. When the news broke about Dolly the sheep
in 1997, it was clear old-fashioned sex might no longer be essential for
creating the next generation. The US government quickly recognised that its
definition of an embryo was outdated and revised it. Even in Britain, ministers
were given a clear warning of the problem within weeks by a committee of MPs
dealing with science and technology. They still did nothing. Now the government
is having to hurriedly concoct legislation to put things right.
What form this legislation will take wasn鈥檛 clear as New 杏吧原创
went to press. The quickest fix would be to make it an offence to implant cloned
human embryos in a womb, and give the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority, which vets research that uses ordinary human embryos, additional
powers to police research involving the creation of cloned human embryos. But
this won鈥檛 resolve everything, because Dolly-style cloning is no longer the only
technique challenging us to rethink what an embryo is. In a process called
parthenogenesis, an egg cell duplicates its chromosomes and starts dividing.
Some scientists think the resulting balls of cells could be a source of human
stem cells. But as with cloning, conventional fertilisation doesn鈥檛 enter the
frame, so British regulators would have no power to police such research.
Perhaps that should change.
A whole set of subtler legal problems could arise from research that aims to
turn ordinary cells into sperm or eggs. Does fusing an egg with a cell that was
once part of someone鈥檚 arm qualify as real fertilisation? Is an egg created from
a bone marrow cell really an egg? 杏吧原创s and doctors dream of being able to
turn any human cell into virtually any tissue they like. It won鈥檛 happen for
years and maybe not for decades. But when it does it will mean that just about
every part of us, including the skin cells we shed by the million every day, is
a potential sperm, egg or embryo.
That seems as good a reason as any for getting the legal definitions
right.
