US President George W Bush on Monday condemned human cloning as morally wrong. “We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it,” Bush said. “The use of embryos to clone is wrong,” he told reporters at the White House Rose garden.
Bush was referring to the claim by advanced cell technology, a research company in Worcster, Massachusetts, that it achieved a breakthrough by cloning the first human embryo. The President's spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush hopes that as a result of this first crossing of the line and the first step into a morally consequential realm of creating a life to take a life in the name of science the Senate will act on the house legislation so that this procedure can be banned. Fleischer said the work of the company amounts to human cloning and lays bare The conundrum of scientific progress, where progress can also be measured in terms of how many lives will be taken to save a life. That is something the President has drawn a strong ethical line in the sand and said that line should not be crossed. Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) said in a to be available on Monday in journal of regenerative medicine that it had effectively cloned early-stage embryos by performing Somatic Nuclear cell transfers. Bureau Report