Dame Sally Davies described the research as "life-saving treatment"
Mitochondrial research will cost lives, says SPUC.
SPUC was responding to the announcement by Professor Dame Sally Davies, the government's chief medical officer that the government intends to bring forth draft regulations to allow the abnormal creation of human embryos in order to address mitochondrial diseases.
In a statement, Dame Sally described the research as "life-saving treatment".
A spokesman for SPUC responded: "In fact, the vast majority of embryonic children created in the laboratory are killed because they do not meet the 'quality control' requirements dictated by scientists involved in such increasingly macabre experiments.
"Also, over the past 20 years, proponents of human embryo experimentation have repeatedly claimed that such research offered the promise - and perhaps the only hope - of finding treatments for serious diseases. The public has been repeatedly misled. It is the biotech industry's excuse to create a genetically manipulated baby." [SPUC, 28 June]
Paul Tully, SPUC's general-secretary, told ITV News: "We're concerned that we are replacing what we know to be defective DNA in the embryos that we don't like with what we think is good DNA - but we can't be sure.
"Putting the money into this kind of research is denying funding to research which is needed and ongoing to help people with mitochondrial diseases and other diseases in other ways. We've seen the same thing before with stem cell research, we've seen it with IVF - promises that using embryos will lead to advances but come to nothing." [ITV, 28 June]
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