The BBC reports the increased popularity of the an alternative to the use of stem cells taken from human embryos here. Ian Wilmut, the researcher who cloned Dolly the Sheep, claims that his move was not based on ethical considerations: “To me it’s always been ethically acceptable to think that if you could use cells from a human embryo to develop a treatment for a disease like motor neurone disease, for which there is no treatment at present, then that is an acceptable thing to do.”
Regardless of the reason, I applaud the furtherance of alternatives to the destruction of human embryos.
Jeff Gissing 