The ProLife Alliance, a UK anti-abortion campaigning group, has been granted leave to appeal to the House of Lords against an Appeal Court ruling that the
1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act can be used to regulate research involving cloning techniques. The ProLife Alliance originally raised a challenge to this use of the Act in early 2001, when both Houses of Parliament passed regulations to the Act that permitted research on embryos for the purpose of deriving embryonic stem cells that might be used in the treatment of disease. The regulations also covered the use of somatic cell nuclear replacement, or "therapeutic cloning", to create embryos that could be used to obtain stem cells (see
Stem cells and cloning page for further background information). The ProLife Alliance's challenge was based on the view that embryos created in this way are not created by fertilisation and therefore are not covered by the Act or amendments to it. A High Court judge initially ruled in the group's favour, but this decision was overturned on appeal. At that time, the ProLife Alliance was refused permission to appeal to the House of Lords but, according to a
report in Reuters Health, the Lords have decided that they will hear the case later this year.