Amen to that! The Yorkshire Post today has more on Ian Wilmut’s decision to stop his cloning research and pursue the latest developments with iPS cells.

“It’s very exciting, but it took quite a few months for me to decide to switch my area of focus,” he says. “I first heard about the technique in June, but it took a while for me to have the confidence that it would work. It is a much longer term project, but I honestly believe it will be much more useful

“Certainly using skin cells is much easier to accept socially than the use of embryos, but this was very much a personal decision and I still think we need to continue to work in both areas. For me the only ethical debate in terms of the use of human embryos was the risk, albeit a small one, in harvesting the eggs and the fact they are needed for fertility treatment. It was that ethical dilemma which seemed increasingly hard to justify.”

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.