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)