WOMEN having fertility treatment are to be asked to donate eggs purely for therapeutic cloning research by the scientists who last week announced the creation of Britain’s first cloned human embryo.

Professor Alison Murdoch, who leads the team at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, has won clearance to ask IVF patients to give up two eggs from each batch collected for their treatment. The plan, which has been approved by an ethics committee, aims to provide the researchers with the fresh eggs that seem to be essential for successful cloning.

It also promises to deepen controversy about their work, however, which has relied on eggs that would otherwise be thrown away after medical procedures.

The Newcastle team accept that if their efforts to produce cloned embryonic stem cells are to succeed, even this new source of eggs may not be sufficient. Professor Murdoch said that she could not rule out asking for egg donations for research from women who would not otherwise be having such a procedure. Another British team investigating cloning, led by Professor Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, is planning to seek such altruistic donors, though it has not yet secured permission.

This would raise fresh ethical issues, as egg donation carries medical risks that would not be balanced by any potential benefit to the donor.

The procedure requires women to take drugs to stimulate their ovaries, which can cause ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. While this complication is normally mild, it can in rare cases cause kidney damage and can be fatal: last month Temilola Akinbolagbe, 33, from London, died of the condition after IVF treatment.

Donated eggs are essential to therapeutic cloning, which involves taking the nucleus of an adult cell and injecting it into an egg that has had its own genetic material involved.

The goal of such research is to produce embryonic stem cells — master cells that can form any tissue type in the body — that are genetically identical to the patient from whom they were cloned. These could then be used as laboratory models for studying disease, or to grow tissue for treating diabetes, for example.

The Newcastle team’s decision has come because of growing evidence that egg quality is critical to successful cloning.

They have so far relied chiefly on eggs used in IVF procedures that failed to fertilise. These spend many hours outside the body before cloning is attempted, which is thought to reduce the chances of success.

The South Korean team of Professor Woo Suk Hwang that has cloned more than 60 embryos attributes its success to dedicated donors giving up 15 or 20 eggs at a time purely for research.

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