ABSTRACT
Commentators in the rest of Europe often have difficulty in understanding why the United Kingdom has a very liberal regulation of embryo research and often misinterpret it as based on the view that embryos are not morally important. This chapter attempts to explain how the UK reached its present regulatory position, and what it implies about the status of the embryo. In the United Kingdom somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) for research, and potentially in the future therapeutic purposes, is legally permitted if it falls within the purposes specified in Schedule 3 of the Human Fertilization and Embryology (HFE) Act 1990 as amended in the HFE (Research Purposes) Regulations of January 2001. After the demonstration in 1998 of the possibilities for the derivation of human embryonic stem cell lines and of reproductive cloning in mammals it became clear that the derivation of stem cell lines was not an allowable purpose under the HFE Act.
