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Introduction

"Australia's peak health advisory body will next week begin the task of developing national uniform laws governing human cloning. A working party to be set up by the National Health and Medical Research Council will draw up a framework setting national, uniform boundaries for cloning research. The move follows a decision by Australia's health ministers, who agreed yesterday they would ban cloning of humans but might allow cloning of human embryos as a source of cells for tissue repair." AAP News, 28 July, 2000 (Aust)



"Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, is expected today to recommend that limited permission for "therapeutic cloning" should be granted on medical grounds. His announcement will be welcomed by many scientists who claim cloning research will allow major progress in combatting currently incurable diseases. Researchers want to remove stem cells from embryos less than 14 days old and grow them to provide replacement tissue. Many scientists claim that the most feasible source of embryonic stem cells will be infertile women undergoing IVF, a treatment that produces multiple embryos." Independent 16 August, 2000 (UK)



"Last week's recommendation that stem cells should be removed from embryos for medical research raised the issue once again of life's origins, and whether such actions involve the destruction of a human life." Independent 20 August, 2000. (UK)



"The breakthrough was achieved by Monash University PhD student Megan Munsie, whose research was conducted entirely with mice. In the research, cells are taking from the ``patient'' and fused to a donor egg from which the original genetic material has been removed. This new, fused entity grows for three or four days in the laboratory and is then grown into the kind of nerve cells that are needed -- for example -- for Alzheimer's. In the case of humans, a doctors would then transplant them into the brain. 15 Auguts, 2000 The Courier Mail, Brisbane



"As we see it, it is not a question of pro or con stem cell research, since there is a lot of excellent stem cell research going on, but whether the federal government is going to start sponsoring the killing of human embryos, and that's what we oppose," said Douglas Johnson, the National Right to Life Committee's legislative director." 5 June, 2000 Newsday (USA)



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