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Similar cells can be found in mature human beings, which would avoid killing an embryo. But these are available in far smaller quantities and could treat only a limited range of body parts, researchers contend. No adult stem cell has yet been found that could treat heart disease, for example, so scientists would rather cultivate embryos to harvest their stem cells.

Ultimately they hope to discover how to use a patient's own stem cells to create perfectly matched transplant material, thus avoiding the use of embryos. They argue that research must first be carried out on embryos to make that possible.

"Human embryo stem cell research is crucial to the development of stem cell therapies—at least until the programming of cell development is better understood," according to a statement from the Medical Research Council, which has its headquarters in London.

The Commons debate is likely to be emotional, and the stakes are high. "Most of us will pick up a major, debilitating, degenerative disease in our early 60s," Griffin argued. "If we can't research on the human fetus, then the British scientific community will have to progress with one hand tied behind its back," he told Newsroom.

The weight of medical opinion has swung behind extending the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act to allow further research. Therapeutic cloning has won the support of an expert group chaired by Britain's chief medical officer. It is also backed by the influential Royal Society of Medicine and the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which advises the government.

After Friday's debate, Britain's Labor government has promised members of Parliament that they will be allowed to vote on the matter according to their conscience, possibly in December.

But as some medical ethicists point out, it is not just the potential for British science that is at stake. The potential of the human embryo used in research to develop through to adulthood would be obliterated.

"The embryo is a human being—one of us," Dr. Teresa Iglesias, a lecturer in philosophy at University College in London, told the London conference on cloning. "And every human being deserves that no deliberate harm should be caused to them."

Prolife organizations agree. LIFE, based in Leamington Spa, England, has dubbed the process of killing an embryo to save an adult "neo-cannibalism." And Scotland's Cardinal Winning has written to every Scottish member of Parliament urging a vote against so-called therapeutic cloning.

"The simple truth is that therapeutic cloning ultimately means killing those embryos which are raided for their cells," he wrote. "This procedure exploits human beings at the most vulnerable stage of their lives."

Copyright © 2000 Newsroom. Used with permission.

Christianity Today recommended against human cloning in a 1997 editorial, "Stop Cloning Around." Other articles on stem-cell research include:

Tissue of Lies? | Latest stem-cell research shows no urgent need to destroy human embryos for the cause of science. (Sept. 28, 2000)

Beyond the Impasse to What? | Stem-cell research may not need human embryos after all. But why are we researching in the first place? (Aug. 18, 2000)

Thus Spoke Superman | Troubling language frames the stem-cell debate. (June 13, 2000)

New Stem-Cell Research Guidelines Criticized | NIH guidelines skirt ethical issues about embryo destruction, charge bioethicists. (Jan. 28, 2000)

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November (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44