With the successful cloning of a human embryo for stem cell research, mankind now faces the controversial prospect of human life created in the laboratory for study and then destruction.

Has science gone mad, or are mad scientists at work? Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced their unprecedented research, findings and intentions to a stunned medical community Nov. 25.

The company�s spin on their macabre scientific experiment is that they will "make lifesaving therapies for a wide range of human disease conditions."

"These are exciting preliminary results," said Robert P. Lanza, M.D., vice president of Medical and Scientific Development at ACT.  "This work sets the stage for human therapeutic cloning as a potentially limitless source of immune-compatible cells for tissue engineering and transplantation medicine."

"Our intention is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to make lifesaving therapies for a wide range of human disease conditions, including diabetes, strokes, cancer, AIDS, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson�s and Alzheimer�s disease."

Analysts who reviewed the firm�s work published in the current Journal of Regenerative Medicine suggest ACT�s breakthrough is more science gone mad, and a hype to create not a cure for disease but possibly a new class of bio-billionaires through the sale of human embryos.

Opponents worry about people being bred like livestock for profit and "human beings sacrificed for spare parts or profit," said one critic.

The House has overwhelmingly passed legislation to stop the experiments. But the Senate has yet to act.

This medical advance is not being received with welcome arms, and a list of opponents to human embryo cloning is quickly growing. Even President Bush came out against the announcement.

ACT plans to venture into stem cell research next. According to representatives, they are not interested in cloning human beings.

"Human cloning is a hazardous, risky process and should never be used to produce a human being," said ACT�s Ethics Board member, Ronald Green. "We believe that reproductive cloning has potential risks to both mother and fetus that make it unwarranted at this time," ACT scientists added in an article to be published in Scientific American magazine next January.

"And we support a restriction on cloning for reproductive purposes until the safety and ethical issues surrounding it are resolved."

That statement, however, is insufficient to calm opponents who want to see other types of research done to produce stem cells.

Concerned Women of America, a public policy group, contends that cures are being found�through ethical research. Every week new discoveries are announced, yet they receive no attention because they are not controversial, the group said.

On Nov. 12, Japanese scientists reported that adult stem cells taken from patients� own hip bones were used to repair heart damage. Scientists at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia reported on Nov. 11 that they could convert adult human bone marrow cells into brain cells in the laboratory.

In a world where body parts, or organs are needed for transplantation can be bought in poor countries, the line against human cloning should be drawn now. There is too little respect for life to give profit-making companies the chance to clone human beings.