To counter the misinformation disseminated by the bioscience industry citizens must fully understand the terminology, issues and participants that are part of this debate.

Conception – what occurs in successful human sexual reproduction whena male sperm cell and female egg cell unite (also called “fertilization”). When discussing abortion, the MCC has sought laws that protected human life ‘from conception to natural death’. However, when human cloning occurs, there is no union of an egg and sperm cell, and as a result, “conception” as has been traditionally defined does not occur.

Human cloning – a means of creating a human being without resort to the human sexual act. Some incorrectly claim that if there is not the union of a sperm and an ovum (a female egg cell), a human being does not come into being. However, this is not true, and the result of successful human cloning is a human embryo. In fact, by definition, human cloning does not involve the union of a male sperm and a female egg cell. One of the techniques of human cloning commonly discussed is “somatic cell nuclear transfer” (or “SCNT”), where the nucleus of a human female egg cell (containing 23 chromosomes) is removed and replaced with the nucleus from a donor human cell (containing 46 chromosomes).

This biologically replicates what occurs during human conception or fertilization (the 23 chromosomes of the female egg cell are joined by the 23 chromosomes of the male sperm cell) and results in a human embryo. What some in the bioscience industry want the general public to believe is that because the embryo is not implanted in a human female at this stage then he/she is not a human being. (see illustration right.) However most scientists acknowledge the scientific fact that cloning creates a new life, the only distinction is what is done with the cloned individual. Either the embryo is implanted in a womb and allowed to live, or is killed at the beginning of life for his or her stem cells.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Dolly the sheep created in 1996 by researchers in Scotland at the Roslin Institute, using somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning techniques (photo above right). Professor Ian Wilmut and his team cultured 277 cloned sheep embryos for six days, then 29 embryos that seemed to have developed normally and implanted the embryos into surrogate ewes. Dolly was the only lamb to be born alive, the first successfully cloned mammal. If one were to apply the reasoning of opponents of the cloning ban then Dolly was not really a sheep since the embryo which she was created from was not a new life. However, applying the most minimal common sense, one must conclude that Dolly was a sheep, separate and apart from the sheep that contributed the egg cell and the sheep that contributed the donor cell nucleus from which Dolly was created.

Stem cell research – research involving human cells that are capable of evolving into specialized human tissue. For instance, stem cells can create human skin, muscles, nerves or organ tissue. Stem cell research falls into two categories: embryonic stem cell research or non-embryonic stem cell research (sometimes called “adult” stem cell research).

Both the proponents and opponents of embryonic stem cell research agree that embryonic stem cell research necessarily involves destruction of human embryos in order to obtain their stem cells – there is no dispute over this issue. The New York Times in an article on August 24, 2004 stated: “Human embryonic stem cells are derived from human embryos, about a week old, and the only way to get the stem cells is to destroy the embryos.” (“Stem Cells: Promise, in Search of Results”.) The fact that therapeutic cloning involves creating and then destroying human embryos was brought home by Dr Harry Griffin of the Roslin Institute (which cloned Dolly the sheep) when he said, it “is clearly not therapeutic for the embryo.”