China's
Ministry
of Science of Technology and Ministry of Health have issued
recently the Guidelines for Research on Human Embryonic Stem Cells
to departments concerned nationwide. This is the first time for
China to put out written policies to forbid research on human
cloning and permit that on embryonic stem cells and remedial
cloning.
Research on the embryonic stem cells of human beings is regarded
to have bright prospect in curing hard diseases. However, as human
beings' embryonic stem cells originate from an individual potential
embryo of a human being, research on them roused debate on morality
at the very beginning, including social and life morality. Worries
are that such research will lead to doctors' accumulating cells of
embryos not yet born for the need of curing other patients or for
the research on the human cloning, which may arouse fear of science
among the public.
Sources say that the United Nations will issue a protocol to ban
human cloning in 2004. However, differences rose at the conference
early October 2003. Countries as the United States, CostaRica and
Vatican supported all cloning research to be banned while China,
Britain, France and Japan held that cloning research for
reproduction and remedy should be treated differently.
(People's Daily January 15, 2004)