The House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology has cleared the way for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to grant licences for research on human embryonic stem cells (see
report in BBC News On-line). Their decision endorses votes taken in parliament about a year ago, which amended the regulations governing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in order to enable the HFEA to control such research (for further information, see
page on Stem cells and cloning). At the time, the Government undertook that the HFEA would not grant any licences until a House of Lords committee had carefully considered all the issues. The Lords committee, chaired by the Bishop of Oxford, decided that the potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research, which may lead to the development of new treatments for conditions such as spinal injuries and neurodegenerative diseases, justified the use of early human embryos under strictly controlled regulatory conditions. It is expected that most of this work will initially use embryos discarded from IVF programmes, which would otherwise be destroyed, but the committee's decision also confirms the HFEA's authority to grant licences for research on stem cells derived from embryos produced by somatic cell nuclear replacement (so called "therapeutic cloning"). Human reproductive cloning was explicitly banned by parliament early this year.