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.....are just of a few of my immediate response to these insane, Godless people.

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Call to clone babies
to wipe out diseases
Dolly the sheep creator suggests:
'An early embryo is not a person'

 Backing for baby cloning to beat disease


A proposal to create babies that are both cloned and genetically altered to prevent serious hereditary disease is outlined today by the leader of the team that created Dolly the sheep.

Ever since news that Dolly had been cloned from an adult cell made headlines around the world, Prof Ian Wilmut has repeatedly said he is "implacably opposed" to cloning a human being.

But in his forthcoming book After Dolly, serialised today in The Daily Telegraph, he argues that, when the techniques are shown to be safe, society should consider cloning with genetic modification to prevent the birth of babies with serious diseases.

The Edinburgh University professor argues in the book, written with the Telegraph's science editor, Roger Highfield, that cloning an IVF embryo consisting of 100 or so cells is not the same as cloning a person.

The process of cloning - nuclear transfer - that Prof Wilmut's large team honed when he was at the Roslin Institute, culminated in the birth of Dolly in 1996. Cloning also makes it possible to carry out precise genetic corrections, as demonstrated in 1997 when his team unveiled Polly, a sheep altered to secrete a human blood clotting protein in her milk.

The same method potentially offers a much more efficient way to achieve healthy births than current methods of screening embryos for harmful genes.

Prof Wilmut writes: "Doctors should be able to offer at-risk couples the opportunity to conceive with IVF methods, break down the resulting embryos into cells, correct any serious genetic defects in these cells then clone demonstrably healthy cells to create a new embryo that can be implanted to start a pregnancy."

The resulting child would be the identical twin of the original embryo but would have the diseased gene corrected in every one of its cells. The original embryo would be discarded.

"I am extremely concerned about the effects on a child of being a clone of another person and I oppose it. However, an early embryo is not a person and I see the use of nuclear transfer to prevent a child's having a dreadful disease as far less controversial."

Prof Wilmut aired an early version of this proposal two years ago and was criticised for being naive and irresponsible, given the universal opposition to cloning babies.

Few noted that his suggestion was even more radical than the prospect of human cloning alone, since it amounts to so-called germ line modification, which has stirred deep unease among scientists because genetic changes are passed on in eggs and sperm to future generations to change the human gene pool.

In After Dolly, Prof Wilmut examines the ethical and technical arguments in detail and concludes that, when the technology has been perfected and shown to be safe, the promise is so great that it would be immoral not to attempt the procedure to correct serious genetic disorders.

He says that spurning new technologies can be as harmful as failing to regulate them properly and emphasises that the choice of whether to use this method should be left to the individual.

"Even when the technologies of nuclear transfer, genetic manipulation and stem cells have matured, I am sure that some people will still prefer to put up with the random insults of nature than be subject to human intervention, even if it is based on careful consideration of medical issues rather than whims. But at least they will have a choice and, for me, just having the chance to decide is paramount.

"I want people to have new options when it comes to that most fundamental urge: to bring healthy children into this world. The use of genetic and reproductive technologies is not a step backwards into darkness but a step forwards into the light."

Working with colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry, in London, Prof Wilmut is hoping to clone embryos from people with the motor neurone disease ALS to improve understanding of the devastating disorder.