CGS-authored
ALTHOUGH I share the great enthusiasm for the successes of Australia's medical research, those achievements have been won within a framework of ethical constraint. In all of medicine and related research, when undertaking a certain procedure requires that ethical barriers be surmounted, the more formidable the barrier, the greater must be the benefit of the proposed work.
Preparation of the human embryo for research remains a significant ethical obstacle for a substantial portion of the community. Australian legislation is that, under licence and with the permission of parents, experimentation can be allowed on human embryos in excess from IVF programs.
Since the licensing system was introduced in 2002 there have been no discoveries through this work to support arguments of an urgent need for somatic cell nuclear transfer, often called "therapeutic cloning".
Since this process involves the deliberate production of a human embryo to experiment on it, somatic cell nuclear transfer moves the ethical barrier to a much higher level. Many of those who accept the idea of experimentation on excess IVF embryos do not accept the deliberate production of...
Preparation of the human embryo for research remains a significant ethical obstacle for a substantial portion of the community. Australian legislation is that, under licence and with the permission of parents, experimentation can be allowed on human embryos in excess from IVF programs.
Since the licensing system was introduced in 2002 there have been no discoveries through this work to support arguments of an urgent need for somatic cell nuclear transfer, often called "therapeutic cloning".
Since this process involves the deliberate production of a human embryo to experiment on it, somatic cell nuclear transfer moves the ethical barrier to a much higher level. Many of those who accept the idea of experimentation on excess IVF embryos do not accept the deliberate production of...