from the World-watch dept.
An interesting and extensive overview of the issues related to the regulation or banning of human cloning in South Korea appeared in the Korea Herald ("Experts call for urgent legislation on human cloning", by Yoo Soh-jung, 13 July 2001). The article also surveys similar debates in the United States and Europe.
The cloning issue is of particular concern in South Korea, in part because in 1998, researchers at Kyunghee University Hospital's infertility clinic claimed they succeeded in a human cloning test. The researchers removed the nucleus from the ovum of a 30-year-old woman and replaced it with a somatic cell. They claimed ovum successfully reached cell division and segmentation. (These results have since been disputed.) The director of the research team was quoted as saying that the "experiment was not designed to clone human beings but to clone specific organs for transplant."
