ATTITUDES OF IRANIAN PROFESSIONALS TOWARDS HUMAN CLONING

Background and Objective: It appears that the nature and extent of public information and debate on cloning and its potential advantages and disadvantages in the area of human health vary around the world. Furthermore an oriental trend has been shown in this field. We think that scholars are among the most powerful effectors that shape attitudes toward human cloning and stem cell research . in this study we tried to illuminate how Iranian scholars in the field of medicine, genetic and theology think about cloning and its ethical consequences. Methods: To develop a questionnaire , a series of the most important ethical considerations of human cloning were ground under the four bioethical principles developed by the World Health Organization, i.e.autonomy , beneficence non-maleficence, and justice. The questionnaire was checked for validity and reliability. We prepared a complete list of three groups of clinicians (gynecologists, pediatricians, and psychiatrists) and a group of geneticist working in Tehran’s medical universities as senior staffs or resident fellows. A modified questionnaire focused on theological dimensions designed for the theologians. For main centers of Islamic sciences on Tehran were selected for theologians. After getting an oral informed consent, participants were asked to answer an anonymous questionnaire through a face-to-face interview. Likert scaling was used to quantify the results. SPSS version 11 was employed for data abalysis. Results: One hundred and two physicians, 34 geneticists and 65 theologians responded to the survey for a response rate of 75%. The overall mean attitude of medical scholars toward human cloning was 3.11 (95% CI: 3.04-3.17) . The overall mean attitude pg theologians toward human cloning was 3.21 (95% CI: 3.08-3.34) . Age , sex and literacy grade has no significant effect on the attitudes in different groups of professionals. Conclusion: Biomedical and theological scientists in our study showed no negative attitude against human cloning. Knowing many limitation we faced like lack of previous comparable method, possible selection bias, and intuitive nature of many conclusion, no generalization is wise and further research efforts especially qualitative ones are indispensable for unmasking the realities and making new theories in this respect.