STEM CELL RESEARCH AND ITS CLINICAL APPLICATION IN CHINA: INTERACTIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE, ETHICS AND SOCIETY

Since news of Dolly the sheep was first published in Nature in 1997, human cloning and stem cell research have been the topic of ongoing debate in mainland China, both in scientific circles and among the general public. Hundreds of articles on the subject have been published in academic journals, popular magazines, newspapers and websites, and the topic has been featured in a considerable number of television programmes. Decision makers in science and medicine began to address the ethical, legal and social issues involved in biomedicine and biotechnology for the first time in China’s history when a meeting of experts was convened to discuss the implications of the Nature paper.1 One can also find evidence of China’s willingness to engage with ethical issues at the international level; for example, the Chinese government joined France and Germany in their efforts to persuade the United Nations to endorse a resolution prohibiting human reproductive cloning, despite the fact that some Chinese scientists and philosophers are in favor of it. Ironically, on 8 March 2005, the United Nations Assembly adopted a declaration on human cloning in which member states are required to take necessary