Britain rushes to close legal loophole on human cloning

But he added that no country in Europe has introduced legislation specifically banning human reproductive cloning.

As last week's judgment demonstrated, lawmakers are faced with a difficult task of interpreting the letter of the law when it can't keep up with developments. As Dr. Gibson acknowledged: "The whole area is a confused legal minefield." So far, all agencies have welcomed the attempts to clarify the law. As far as the HFSE is concerned, "it's a hole that needs to be plugged."

As HFEA spokesman Yeandel explains, the 1990 act was an attempt to clarify the law in response to the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the first baby born through in vitro fertilization. The act "took a long time" he said. "We thought the job was done."

But the ProLife Alliance challenged the government's assurances that "live-birth cloning" could not take place.

"The United Kingdom has the most liberal abortion and embryology laws in Europe," saysthe pressure group's director, Bruno Quintavalle. "In violation of the European Convention of Human Rights, we are alone in allowing human beings to be created for destructive and experimental purposes."

Their tactic of forcing the government to act by showing that human cloning can take place appears to be working. Within hours of the court ruling, an Italian fertility doctor, Severino Antinori, told the BBC of his plans to come to Britain to carry out human-cloning research.

"It's a very serious threat," says Dr. Gibson, a former geneticist who now heads a state science and technology committee. "You can split an atom and create electricity, but you can also create a bomb. In science, somebody will always try something at some point."

The government announced it would appeal against the court ruling to ensure that stem-cell research is not hindered, and would introduce legislation that "explicitly" makes human reproductive cloning illegal.

"We need clear and unambiguous legislation that regulates therapeutic cloning, [which] has a promising potential for treating chronic diseases," Gibson said in an earlier statement. "The government should at the same time clearly and firmly ban reproductive cloning because of the many scientific, ethical, and political problems associated with the practice."

According to one source close to the government, legislation could be on the statute books "within a matter of days."

But it's more likely, according to Gibson, that it'll be in place by the end of the year.

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