"Licences" against life” “

The chances that the ProLife Association has of winning the legal action it has brought against the British government to stop the cloning of human beings in Great Britain seem to be slight. On 19 February the case went to the examination of the House of Lords (the supreme court in the British legal system). The final verdict is expected within five or six weeks. The crux of the licences. The crux of the action brought by ProLife against the British government concerns the application of the “licences” instituted by the law on artificial insemination of 1990 to the clinics and research centres involved in artificial insemination. After the regulation of 1998, which permitted cloning for therapeutic purposes, and after the law of 2002, which prohibited the implant of cloned embryos in a woman’s uterus, the government is now believed to be on the point of granting “licences” for artificial insemination to various laboratories that intend to clone human beings. On the list of those who have applied for such licences is also the name of Professor Ian Wilmut, creator of Dolly the cloned sheep at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh. The commitment of ProLife… Bruno Quintavalle, the lawyer of Italian origin who founded the ProLife association, does not seem to see much hope of a favourable verdict: “I’m not so optimistic… The fact is that in this country only a small minority supports this cause, whereas in other countries, as in America, a continuous campaign is being waged against the cloning of human beings and that gives us hope”. The ProLife action has already lasted two years, and the hearing in the House of Lords is the last chance for the association, already defeated in the Court of Appeal, to make its own voice heard. “If we lose – said the director of ProLife – it means that there’s a lack of moral support from the population and the institutions, it means there’s a lack of hope, faith and fighting spirit, but also of “media interest”. “At least – continues Quintavalle – we have blocked the legislation in favour of cloning for a couple of years”. The ProLife movement in the United Kingdom is run by laypeople and is non-confessional. Its members include many Catholics, including members of the religious congregations, but also atheists and Muslims. Founded in 1997, it aims to defend the right to life “using peaceful and democratic means”. In the UK 55 candidates presented themselves at the last general elections in 1997 on a ProLife ticket. …and that of the Catholic Church. The point is, explains Anthony McCarthy, research fellow at Linacre Centre, the centre of bioethics in London established by the Catholic Church, that “the term ‘therapeutic cloning’ is deliberately deceptive, because in actual fact cloning is called either ‘reproductive’ of ‘therapeutic’ depending of how the embryo is treated, but the initial technique to produce the clone is always the same. Indeed, whereas in reproductive cloning the decision is taken to allow the human being to grow – although giving rise to the grave problem of paternity and the distortion of the parent-child relationship – in therapeutic cloning the embryo is killed to extract from it the cells needed for research”. The Catholic Church in Britain “is utterly opposed to cloning”, says McCarthy, “and as a Catholic research centre we have published various documents and books on this issue and presented an appeal to the House of Lords in 2001”. As regards the legal action brought by ProLife, explains the researcher, “we have not been able to participate in it, because we are an academic centre and not an association or political party”. “We hope and pray that Pro Life may win its case – he concludes – even though we realize that there’s insufficient mobilization in this country for so grave a problem as abortion”.