Cloning Of Human Embryo Draws Criticism

Research Aims To Fight Diseases

BOSTON -- Religious and political leaders criticized a Massachusetts research company for claiming to have cloned a human embryo.

Advanced Cell Technology said its researchers have cloned a six-cell human embryo after starting with a donated female egg cell.

Company executives said its work is aimed at producing genetically matched replacement cells for patients with a wide range of diseases.

The company said it has no interest in transplanting cloned embryos into a woman's womb to give birth to a cloned human being. And there's no indication that the cloned embryo would be capable of doing that.

The head of Advanced Cell Technology, Dr.Michael West, said his research has broad applications for medicine and can do "so much more good than bad."

Critics wasted little time attacking the announcement.

Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee said the company is creating embryos for the "sole purpose" of killing them and harvesting their cells. He said that if Congress doesn't act quickly, the Massachusetts company "will be opening human embryo farms."

The White House also treated the announcement coolly.

"The cloning of human embryos is wrong. We should not, as a society grow, life to destroy it. It is morally wrong," President George W. Bush said Monday during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

An administration spokeswoman said President Bush "made it clear" he opposes any form of human cloning. Bush allowed federal funding for research, but only for existing stem cell lines.

Advanced Cell Technology's work would be banned under anti-cloning legislation passed earlier this year by the House, but stalled in the Senate. Several states, including California, have such a ban in place.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said a line has been crossed, and that the president hopes the Senate will now move to quickly ban the practice.

Over the summer, when Bush announced his approval for limited stem cell research, he said he and most Americans "recoil" at the idea of cloning humans to maintain embryo farms for spare body parts.

A top Vatican official also condemned the reported cloning of a human embryo.

Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone, who's involved in protecting church doctrine, said the goal of curing disease with embryo stem cells cannot justify the scientific breakthrough.

If the cloning process destroys human beings to treat other human beings, he said, then "the end doesn't justify the means." His comments came in an Italian TV interview.

The Vatican believes life begins at conception.

Following Advanced Cell Technology's announcement, a second company, Clonaid, said it, too, has cloned human embryos -- but in unpublished research.

Clonaid's director, Brigitte Boisselier, said, "We're doing embryos every day."

She said the embryos were created by injecting eggs with a variety of other cells -- but refused to give details.

She said the company hopes to eventually create fully developed human clones.

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