illuminating science

A bill to legalise the cloning of human embryos for stem cell research today passed the Senate. Apparently, it’s also expected to go through the House of Representatives and hence, as best as I can gather, it will soon be legal to create cloned embryos for the purpose of extracting their stem cells to potentially create cures for a number of debilitating diseases, including Alzheimers and MS. DNA from an adult donor is transferred into an egg, which is allowed to mature for only 5-6 days, after which stem cells, versatile cells which are able to specialise to a variety of different tasks, are extracted which are compatible with their donor. This is therepeutic cloning”, and differs from reproductive cloning in that the embryo is never implanted and so cannot develop into a fetus (and, in all likelyhood, wouldn’t - cloned embryos in other animals have a very low successful birth rate).

Despite claims from some conservative Senators, I think this is a very positive result - although an egg is being fertilised, I don’t think there’s any issue of “destroying a life” here. And it puts Australia in a good position for being at the forefront of medical research.