Cloning Disease-Free Babies

June 6, 2006

Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists involved in creating Dolly the cloned sheep, says he is he is “implacably opposed” to cloning a human being yet has written a book proposing using cloning and gene alteration to create babies free from hereditary diseases. “An early embryo is not a person,” said Wilmut, “and I see the use of cloning to prevent a child having a dreadful hereditary disease as far less controversial.” Julia Millington, political director of the ProLife Alliance disagrees: “Selecting healthy cells from an embryo with genetic defects in order to clone it; thereby creating a healthy identical twin is not only unethical, it is utterly perverse.”