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Humans to be cloned in battle to cure disease

The scientist who created Dolly the sheep has been given the go-ahead to produce cloned human embryos in the search for a cure for motor neurone disease.

Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, has been awarded a licence to carry out the controversial research in Britain, a move that won support from Australians with the condition.

Professor Wilmut said therapeutic cloning would provide an "invaluable shortcut" for scientists trying to tackle the disease, which remains incurable despite decades of research.

Cells taken from people with the disease will be used to create cloned embryos. Stem cells carrying the genetic defects that cause the disease will then be extracted for experiments in which researchers hope to understand why degeneration occurs.

Therapeutic cloning became legal in Britain in 2001 but was banned in Australia two years ago.

An Australian Academy of Science spokesman, John White, said the academy had long argued the technique should be permitted here because of its medical potential.

Professor Wilmut's approach was one of the best ways to try to answer fundamental questions about the disease, Professor White said. "I think it could produce very valuable results."

A NSW spokesman for Right to Life, David Cotton, however, believed it was morally unacceptable. "Therapeutic cloning is creating human life, albeit embryonic life, so as to destroy it."

The president of the Motor Neurone Disease Association of Australia, Helen Sjardin-Howard, said the association backed the research as long as it was "legal, has a sound scientific rationale and has the potential to bring us closer to finding the causes, improving treatments and discovering cures for motor neurone disease".

Paul Brock, who has the disease, said people with the condition were "absolutely desperate" for a breakthrough. Researchers had known about the condition for more than 130 years. "The stunning statistic is that most people die within two to three years of diagnosis with no current prospect of a cure."

Dr Brock, author of an autobiography, A Passion for Life, and a rare long-term survivor, said he was totally opposed to reproductive cloning to produce a human being, and to any creation of embryos from sperm and egg purely for research.

But he believed Professor Wilmut's approach using a patient's cell and an egg was ethically acceptable, as long as the eggs were donated without duress.

About 1400 Australians have motor neurone disease and it kills about 500 people a year.