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LONDON (AFP) - The British government is expected to give the go-ahead for human embryos to be cloned for medical research after a panel of experts concluded it would be beneficial, the Daily Telegraph said.
The newspaper quoted one unnamed member of the panel as saying: "The potential is enormous. This could allow us to regrow a heart muscle or bone marrow and that is not a threat to humanity."
"Ministers are almost certain to end the ban on the 'therapeutic cloning' of embryos for research that could eventually cure kidney, liver or heart disease," the daily said, quoting unnamed government sources.
However, the newspaper said the government would first try to convince the public that "using embryos for tissue engineering" was different from "creating a carbon copy of a human being."
A panel of scientific advisers urged the government in December 1998 to allow cloning of human embryos under 14 days old for research purposes only, but in June last year the government decided to maintain its ban.
A British company that contributed to the creation of Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, announced in mid-March the first cloning of pigs. Experimenters hailed it as a breakthrough in the race to produce organs for transplant to humans, a process called xenotransplantation.
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