An article by Roger Highfield, the science correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, appeared under this headline in London’s Week in August 2000. Highfield described how recent authors distinguish between reproductive cloning, in which a new animal or human being is created from one “parent,” and therapeutic cloning, the purpose of which is regenerative therapy. Such therapy uses material taken from human embryos as therapeutic products in the (possible future) treatment of certain illnesses. The two-way classification is not accurate because both types of cloning are reproductive: it’s just that in (so-called) therapeutic cloning a human being is created in vitro for the specific purpose, first, of experimentation, and secondly, if the research is successful, so that its tissues can be mined for use in medical treatments. In other words embryos will be created and then killed in order that other human beings can be cured of diseases. If the research is successful, thousands or millions of human embryos will be created and destroyed in order to produce medical products. The program both depends on and creates a deep contempt for (early) human life. Highfield’s explanation of the technique of therapeutic cloning runs as follows:

Regenerative therapy involves the harvesting of pluripotent or stem cells, that is, cells which can give rise to many different kinds of tissue. Such cells exist in embryos; adult stem cells, by contrast, normally only give rise to specialized tissues. Implanted pluripotent stem cells have been shown to regenerate a wide