Expert attacks church cloning claim

The Archbishop of Glasgow, the Rt Rev Mario Conti, accused the government of paving the way for human cloning.

He claimed the first step on the "nightmarish journey" was the acceptance of test tube babies in 1978.

But Lord Robert Winston, one of the UK's top fertility experts, said the cleric's comments damaged the reputation of scientists.

The criticisms by Lord Winston, of London's Imperial College and the Hammersmith Hospital, appear in the Sunday Herald newspaper.

Last week Archbishop Conti said he shared the scepticism of many scientists over claims that the world's first cloned baby had been born.

He suggested the only reason such "difficult questions" were now being faced was the fact that "several moral boundaries" had already been crossed.

The Roman Catholic leader claimed the first step on "this nightmarish journey" was the British Government's acceptance of in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Lord Winston said the Archbishop was one of a number of "judgmental" people who had used the "ridiculous" announcement last month by US-based company Clonaid that a cloned baby girl had been born to condemn human IVF.

Lord Winston said the archbishop, like everyone else, had to be prepared to change his ethical views because of evolving scientific breakthroughs which helped humans understand the "real world".

He said it was "shocking" that Archbishop Conti made the remarks considering he was such a senior and influential figure and due to his appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, one of the world's oldest scientific societies.

He went on: "But if this were not enough, he has taken the astonishing course of comparing the kind of research conducted by people like myself with what was carried out under the evil regime of the Nazis.

"He has the effrontery to compare the life-giving work we are attempting with the appalling events of the Holocaust and the liquidation of the Jews."

Lord Winston said he shared the belief that risking an abnormal baby by cloning was "evil".

But he added: "Surely producing healthy human life and protecting it properly must be one of the highest purposes to which mankind should strive."

"What we must ensure as a society is that each of us use our great divine gifts - be they scientific, medical or in religious leadership - for good purposes."