Cloning Could "Return" Deceased Beings

Now that biologists in Oregon have reported using cloning to produce a monkey embryo and extract stem cells, it looks more plausible than before that a human embryo will be cloned and that a cloned human will be born some day. But not necessarily in the Americas or Europe. While some critics have been fretting about the morality of stem cell research and genetic engineering, prominent Western scientists have been going to Asia, like the geneticists Nancy Jenkins and Neal Copeland, who left the National Cancer Institute in the United States and moved last year to Singapore. Asia offers researchers new labs, fewer restrictions and a different religious viewpoint. In South Korea, when Hwang Woo Suk reported creating human embryonic stem cells through cloning, he justified it by citing his Buddhist belief in recycling life through reincarnation. His claim was later exposed as a fraud, but before that happened, his approach was supported by the Venerable Ji Kwan, executive director of South Korea's largest Buddhist order, the Jogye, who said research with embryos was in accord with Buddha's precepts and urged Korean scientists not to be guided by Western ethics. "Asian religions worry less than Western religions that biotechnology is about 'playing God,' " says Cynthia Fox, the author of "Cell of Cells," a book about the global race among stem cell researchers. "Therapeutic cloning, in particular, jibes well with the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation."