Home | Contact Us | Newsletters

THAT Stephen Morgan (Letters, 22/12), no doubt along with most of the public, still believes the cloning debate is a choice between a test-tube entity and the health of his loved ones is an indictment of the poor reporting on this issue. The solution to this whole debate is literally under our nose.

Millions of stern cells, which are readily available in every individual of all ages, can be grown entirely ethically from small tissue-samples easily harvested from the patient's own nose, as proven by Professor Alan Mackay-Sim at Griffith University in Brisbane. The Griffith University research team is already using them to investigate Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, motor neurone disease and epilepsy, and is currently conducting a world-first human clinical trial into spina! cord regeneration.

The truth is that the case for cloning is redundant; that cloning to obtain embryonic stem cells is unnecessary. Adult stem cells are scientifically superior, since they do not carry the genetic damage caused by the cloning process, do not incorporate foreign mitochondrial DNA, are more readily and cheaply obtained, readily multiplied and more stable genetically (meaning they do not cause tumors, as do embryonic, stem cells).

Adult stem cells are a more viable scientific alternative to find the cures we all want, without any ethical problems.

Alan Baker

Mansfield, Qld