Clone report sparks fresh debate
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A microscopic photo released by Seoul National University shows eight of the cloned embryos.
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South Korean researchers report they have cloned human embryos and extracted stem cells. CNN's Sohn Jie-ae has more.
Professor Hwang Yoon-Young hails the cloning breakthrough.
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(CNN) -- The announcement by South Korean scientists that they had created human embryos by cloning and extracted embryonic stem cells has raised concerns around the world.
The technique, scientists at Seoul National University said, was not designed to make babies but to further the process known as therapeutic cloning, a possible treatment for a multitude of diseases.
Advances in stem-cell technology have been hailed as holding potential cures for many crippling illnesses, such as diabetes, spinal cord injuries and Parkinson's disease. (Full story)
According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, stem cells can be manipulated by scientists to develop into many other human cells.
But opponents say using embryos, even ones just several minutes old, is destroying a human life. Embryos are destroyed when stem cells are removed.
"The result of our research proves it is possible scientifically for human cloning, and we are likely to revive the controversy over human cloning," Hanyang University professor Hwang Yoon-Young said.
Although cloning may be technically possible, the moral issues will be the great dilemma, said Arthur Kaplan, medical ethicist and director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.
"I think the big question is: If you make this kind of thing in a dish, have you created a human life?" Kaplan said. "Can you make something that people have strong moral views about in terms of destroying it, in order to benefit other people? And that's going to be the key debate."
Kaplan said splitting the debate into two issues -- cloning for making babies and cloning for research purposes -- would help in making sensible policy.
But many people believe all such experiments should be banned -- both in the United States and around the world.
Last year, a ban on human cloning passed the U.S. House of Representatives but failed to get approval by the Senate over questions of whether cloning for research purposes could be allowed.
The United Nations decided at the end of last year to delay any decision on a human cloning ban for two years.
"Reports of human cloning experiments undertaken in South Korea underscore the need for a comprehensive national and international ban on all human cloning," U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said in a statement.
"Human cloning is wrong. It treats the youngest of humans as mere property and should be banned."
Some ethicists agreed. "Controversy continues to swirl around killing even long-abandoned human embryos for research," John Kilner, president of the Chicago-based Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, told Reuters.
"The South Korean experiment disturbingly goes significantly further. It produces human embryos for the explicit purpose of fatally mining them to obtain bodily materials for experimental purposes."
However, groups calling for cures for specific diseases disagree, arguing that human embryos are destroyed daily in fertility clinics, in abortions and in natural miscarriages.
"We don't care where they find a cure for this disease," Bob Goldstein of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation added.
Dr. Donald Kennedy, editor of the journal Science, which published the report, dismissed fears that the release of details about the experiment was a recipe for cloning human babies.
"It is a recipe only in the sense that 'catch a turtle' is the recipe for turtle soup," Kennedy told a news conference in Seattle, where the research was presented.
"The goal of this research is to cure patients using their own tailor-made cells," agreed Daniel Perry, president of the Campaign to Advance Medical research, a group formed to support therapeutic cloning.
Scientists have cautioned it could take years of further research before stem-cell science turns into actual therapies.
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
