More than a year later than promised, the British government last month released a report compiled by an expert group headed by Chief Medical Officer, Liam Donaldson, on the potential medical benefits of human stem cell research and cell nuclear replacement [cloning]. To the relief of the international scientific community, the report finds in favor of allowing experimentation on human embryos for the purpose of stem cell research (Nature Med. 5, 855; 1999).

The government has accepted the report's recommendations and a positive vote in the Houses of Parliament this fall should ensure that appropriate changes are made to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA) of 1990. Although the use and creation of human embryos is already permitted under the 1990 Act for five specific research purposes, the amendment for stem cell exploration will be the first technique approved that is not related to human reproductive research. The Government continues to regard the cloning of human beings as “ethically unacceptable” and will bring forward legislation to make reproductive cloning by the cell nuclear replacement technique a criminal offense.

The government is now asking its Research Councils, which include the Medical Research Council, to establish stem cell research programs as a priority “focusing on the derivation of stem cell lines from all sources (including embryos), the production of stem cell lines by cell nuclear replacement, reprogramming the somatic cell nucleus to derive stem cell lines and the differentiation of stem cell lines for therapeutic purposes.”