Many medical professionals felt the same and sounded a warning about the dangers a human clone could cause in future

By IOL South Asia Correspondent

NEW DELHI, February 20 (IslamOnline.net) - Research on cloning "with intent to produce an identical human being" has been prohibited in India since its "safety, success, utility and ethical acceptability has not been established", an Indian minister told Parliament here Wednesday, February 19.

In a written reply, Minister for Health Sushma Swaraj added that the Central Ethics Committee on Human Research of the Indian Council of Medical Research has evolved a set of ethical guidelines.

The guidelines have been accepted and circulated among all the scientific institutions in the country involved in research on human beings for its compliance.

President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam had on Saturday, February 15, opposed the idea of human cloning and said the process should be limited to vital human organs.

"Human cloning should not be done. However, cloning of important organs like liver and heart could be beneficial,'' the President, a noted scientist and architect of India's missile and nuclear programs, told students during an interactive session with students in Mumbai.

President Kalam said importance of human brain could not be ignored. "By 2009 a personal computer that will cost Rs 25,000 will be able to perform one trillion calculations per second. By 2019 the computing ability will be that of a human brain and by 2029 it will be 1,000 times faster than brain. But we cannot replace the human brain,'' he said.

I believe that human cloning should not be done,'' the President said."

President Kalam's opposition to human cloning had sparked a debate on the controversial concept of having human genetic duplicates.

Many medical professionals felt the same and sounded a warning about the dangers a human clone could cause in future.

''We are not at all prepared for human cloning,'' said Dr. Indira Hinduja who developed the country's first test-tube baby.

''What happened to Dolly (the cloned ewe) is known to everybody. According to reports she was suffering from lung disorder, what happens in case a human clone also meets the same fate,'' she asked.