Human cloning breakthrough prompts objections

News that scientists had for the first time recovered stem cells from cloned human embryos prompted dire warnings from religious leaders who say the research crosses a moral red line and could lead to designer babies.

Boston cardinal Sean O’Malley, point man for the U.S. Catholic bishops on bioethical issues, said that “this means of making embryos for research will be taken up by those who want to produce cloned children as ‘copies’ of other people.”

Human cloning “treats human beings as products,” O’Malley said, “manufactured to order to suit other people’s wishes. . . . A technical advance in human cloning is not progress for humanity but its opposite.”