Aggregated News
South Africa has moved from a total ban on human cloning to allowing limited use for the treatment of diseases.
A committee of experts, working with the Health Department, has drawn up draft regulations which will be put up for public scrutiny over the next three months.
They permit the use of human eggs to create stem cells for therapeutic and research purposes, but still prohibit reproductive cloning.
Although potentially controversial, the regulations under the National Health Bill are in line with latest British policy where authorities this week granted a licence to proceed with therapeutic cloning.
South African experts in human genetics and bio-ethics hailed the British decision to allow stem cell creation from embryos as a milestone.
They will now be able to test the theories that stem cells are capable of growing into nearly all cell types in the body and have the potential to cure diseases like Alzheimer's.
South Korean scientists first revealed in February that they had cloned 20 early developing stem cell clusters and had extracted stem cells for research.
Chairman of the Human...
.jpg){kind=link}