California Human Cloning Projects Question Public Funding

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) __ There are many questions remaining about California´s ambitious plans to publicly finance human cloning projects for medical research.

One of the thorniest questions may be how scientists plan to gather the thousands of eggs they´ll need from women. It´s an ethical dilemma that has made unlikely allies of Christian groups and women´s rights activists. The Christian groups believe cloning immorally creates and destroys life in the name of science. And the women´s rights activists fear that poor women will be exploited by commercial interests willing to pay thousands of dollars to donate eggs produced by fertility drugs.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine prohibits cloning to create babies but plans to fund human cloning projects designed to create stem cells. To do that, California researchers will need eggs.