The ban on human cloning is stupid – Brexit is UK’s chance to get rid of it

According to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, human cloning should be illegal because “everyone has the right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity”. The UK’s laws have to be in line with this – but only until Brexit. Fifteen years to the month since the death of Dolly the sheep in Edinburgh, it’s time to take this opportunity to reconsider the law.
The relevant UK legislation is the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008). Section three stipulates that it is a crime to place a human embryo in a woman unless it was created by the fertilisation of an egg from the ovaries of a woman by sperm from the testes of a man. Since human cloning creates embryos in a different way – replacing the nucleus of a human egg cell by DNA from a somatic cell, for instance – it is outlawed.