London

Britain's cloning regulations have been thrown into chaos by a court ruling that it is not illegal to create a cloned human baby. In a judgement on 15 November, the High Court ruled that existing laws do not cover cloned embryos because they are not formed through fertilization. The government says it will appeal, and is also considering emergency legislation.

Earlier this year the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was amended (see Nature 409, 5; 2001) to allow research into using human embryonic stem (ES) cells to grow replacement tissues. This was intended to include cloned embryos, to allow work on 'therapeutic' cloning, which holds the prospect of growing grafts perfectly matched to individual patients. No one has yet applied to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) for a licence to conduct such research, but the law has been praised by stem-cell researchers for appreciating the difference between therapeutic and reproductive cloning.

The new ruling — on a case brought by the ProLife Alliance, which opposes ES-cell research — means that the HFEA no longer has the jurisdiction to award such licences. It effectively leaves human cloning completely unregulated. Severino Antinori, the Italian fertility expert who claims that he will clone human babies, says he now wants to relocate to Britain.

The court's decision will not have an immediate impact on British ES-cell researchers, as they are currently working with cells isolated from embryos created by in vitro fertilization. But they say it is important that the cloning regulations are restored. Austin Smith, director of the Centre for Genome Research at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement that if the court has “identified a loophole that would permit the creation of children by reproductive cloning, it is essential that such a loophole be blocked”.