However, with the ejection of Australian Elizabeth Blackburn, from the University of California at San Francisco, and theologian William May, of the University of Virginia, the council's director, Dr Leon Kass, will be able to take a firm stand against all forms of cloning and and be more critical of other forms of reproductive technology.

Three new members have been appointed to the council. Dr Benjamin Carsons, of Johns Hopkins University, is best known for trying to separate adult conjoined twins from Iran last years. An Afro-American, he often invokes the Bible and has lamented that "we live in a nation where we can't talk about God in public". Diana Schaub, of Loyola College in Maryland, is a strong supporter of Dr Kass's conservative views on bioethics. Peter Augustine Lawler is a respected political science academic who opposes abortion.

Although embryonic stem cell researchers still believe that cures will come, the Washington Post reports that "in moments of candour... many scientists concede that therapeutic cloning is far down the list of reasons they want to clone human embryos". They have now begun to highlight the embryo's potential for research, their focus shifting from making sick adults healthy to making healthy embyros sick. "Instead of making cloned embryos as a source of healthy stem cells for transplantation into patients, scientists are proposing to make cloned embryos that explicitly bear the genetic glitch or glitches at the root of a patient's disease," the Post says.

The disease highlighted by leading stem cell researchers like Ian Wilmut, the Scottish scientist who created Dolly the sheep, and Irving Weissman, of Stanford University, is motor neurone disease (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). They envisage taking a normal human egg and creating a clone with a diseased cell from a patient. The cloned embryo would then produce nerve stem cells. Researchers could watch the disease develop and use the embryos to test drugs which might slow or prevent the gradual degeneration.

"This use of clones has been totally missed by the public but is of extreme importance to really understand the molecular basis of disease," "says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, an American company which is developing uses for cloning.

This would happen when a couple wishes to avoid passing on an inherited disease to their children. Using IVF, they could manufacture an embryo which would yield embryonic stem cells. Using genetic engineering techniques, a scientist could alter the offending gene and use the corrected stem cells to create a clone. "The resulting embryo would be the identical twin of the original one, but with the diseased gene corrected in every one of its cells. Although such a child would be a clone, it would be the clone of the new individual, not the clone of one of its parents."

• Tasmanian Stuart Godfrey, who helped his mother, former Tasmanian TV chef and author Elizabeth Godfrey, to commit suicide.

• Tasmanian Catherine Anne Pryor, who helped her 79-year-old father to commit suicide.

• Fred Thompson, from the central coast of NSW, who killed his wife who was suffering from multiple sclerosis.

• The 21 people who accompanied Nancy Crick, the Queensland woman advised by Dr Nitschke, when she committed suicide.

Mrs Runciman, 33, decided to have a child when she learned of the existence of a test to determine whether her embryos would carry the gene. She produced eight embryos and five were carriers. Two non-carriers were implanted in her womb, and she became pregnant with Nathan. He is probably the first child to be screened for this disease.

Professor Harris later explained his stand. "There is a very widespread and accepted practice of infanticide in most countries. We ought to be much more upfront about the ethics of all of this and ask ourselves the serious question: what do we really think is different between newborns and late foetuses." He acknowledged that this could lead to infanticide for cosmetic reasons, but said that the child's future was a matter for individual couples.

• A 64-year-old Indian woman has given birth to a 1.75 kilo boy, making her one of the world's oldest mothers. Mrs Papathiammal Subramaniam, of Tamil Nadu, used an egg donated by a 30-year-old relative and her 74-year-old husband's sperm. The couple had had no children in their 47 years of marriage. ~ BBC, Feb 23

• An Israeli woman has given birth to twins from embryos created 12 years ago and kept in a freezer. She already has twins from the same batch of embryos who are now 12 years old. The previous record for frozen embryos is believed to be 7 years. ~ BBC, Feb 4