Human Cloning, IVF and Embryo Experimentation: ‘Designer Babies'

• Cloning means creating human copies of other people. Clones may have identical or very similar physical characteristics but would have unique and individual personalities.
  
• Cloning confuses human relationships. The clone may have one legal parent; that is the person who was cloned. Its legal parent will also be its biological brother or sister since they share genetic parents. The clone may also have a surrogate mother.
  
• Cloning is often referred to as either ‘therapeutic’ or ‘reproductive’ but in fact all cloning is reproductive as it creates new human beings; it is only how they are used that is different.
  
• In so-called therapeutic cloning, a human embryo is created to extract its stem cells. The embryo is destroyed in the process.
  
• So-called reproductive cloning involves placing a cloned embryo into a womb, in the hope that it will implant, grow and be born.
  
• Scientists hope that stem cells can be used to grow new body tissue and body parts to help people with incurable disabilities or illnesses.
  
• We do not need to use embryos or create clones to find stem cells, there are other sources.
  
• Stem cells can be found in the umbilical cords and placentas of new-born babies and also at different sites within our own bodies.

• Dolly the sheep was cloned from a 6 year-old ewe. Dolly aged prematurely when she was born because all the cells in her body were already 6 years old.
  
• Up to 98% of cloned animals have genetic deformities. Cloning humans is likely to produce the same result.
  
• The UK government allows so-called therapeutic cloning but has banned so-called reproductive cloning. However, in one survey a majority of medical scientists said that ‘therapeutic’ cloning may lead to human ‘reproductive’ cloning in the future1.

• Scientists using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to create embryos in a glass dish are able to screen and then destroy embryos who have genetic defects. The process used is called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
  
• IVF is a multi-million pound industry despite having a failure rate of about 80%.
  
• The leading scientists in IVF want to run health checks on all IVF babies born since 1978 as they do not know what health or developmental problems IVF may have caused for babies conceived in this way.
  

• Between 1978 and 2002 68,000 IVF babies were born but 1.2 million embryos created by IVF were frozen, destroyed or used in research.
  
• Between 1990 and 2001 about 500,000 embryos were used in research, yet no significant cures for illness or disease were found.
  
• Human embryos used in research are almost always destroyed.

We all began life as embryos.

1. The Independent, 30 August 2000.

SPUC Scotland
March 2003

Copyright © 2002-2008 The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. All Rights Reserved. Tel: 0141 221 2094. E-mail: Web Design & Development by CSS Web Design