Court approves cloning challenge

I thought this might interest you although it's not tech related :P

The Court of Appeal has allowed a government challenge to a High Court decision that wrecked legislation designed to regulate cloning.

Government lawyers went before the Appeal Court on Wednesday to argue that the creation of embryos using the technique that made the sheep clone Dolly could be controlled under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

Allowing the appeal, the Master of the Rolls Lord Phillips, sitting with two other judges, said: "I hold that an organism which is CNR (cloning) falls within the definition of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act."

Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child

BBC science correspondent Fergus Walsh says the ruling means researchers who want to carry out cloning research will be able to go ahead.

In November, Mr Justice Crane had ruled against the government after anti-abortion campaigners highlighted the act's definition of an embryo as the union of an egg cell and a sperm cell - the Dolly technique, cell nuclear transfer (CNR), does not use sperm to create an embryo.

News source: BBC SCI-TECH News - Court approves cloning challenge