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Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) -- As U.S. lawmakers prepare to debate a bill that would expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, South Korean scientists have announced what supporters will see as the biggest breakthrough yet in the controversial work.

For the first time, the researchers say they have produced embryonic stem cells that genetically mirror specific patients whose cells were used to clone early-stage human embryos.

Proponents have called the technology "therapeutic cloning" on the grounds that the cells may one day be used to treat disease.

Increasingly, however, scientists are advising against the use of wording suggesting that treatments are looming, when they are years or even decades away. They favor the scientific term "somatic cell nuclear transfer."

Pro-lifers who believe human life starts at the point of conception prefer to call the process "destructive cloning," pointing to the resulting death of the embryo.

In an achievement reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science, a team of scientists from Seoul National University extracted DNA from skin cells of nine people diagnosed with spinal injures, juvenile diabetes and a rare immune disorder. These are the types of problems researchers hope will one day be treated with stem cells.

The genetic material was then inserted into donated eggs - whose original DNA had been removed - and fertilized in a laboratory. Once the eggs developed to a stage where stem cells were present, the cells were harvested.

The scientists, who last year were the first in the world to report the successful cloning of a human embryo, said their latest work had proven far more efficient: They were able to derive one stem cell line from 17 attempts, compared to an earlier success rate of one in more than 200 attempts.

This was attributed in part to the fact that the eggs used in the latest research had been donated - with consent - by young, fertile women, rather than ones left over from in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment.

Science magazine quoted a leading stem cell researcher, Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying of the Korean research results: "Some people will hate it, others will love it."

"But it puts the discussion on a very firm footing now. People will have to rethink the argument that it's not efficient."

The news drew a strong response Friday from Australia bioethicist Dr. John Fleming, who said researchers continued to define ethical arguments in scientific terms, justifying the cloning and subsequent destruction of embryos in terms of "efficiency."

He also questioned the efficiency claim, arguing that the stem cells had come from "unhealthy cloned embryos which will almost certainly be a basket case of genetic errors."

"And where the violation of fundamental human rights is concerned, 'efficiency' as an ethical justification doesn't cut it, any more than when it was used to justify Nazi experiments on human beings," added Fleming, adjunct professor of bioethics at the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute and president of Campion College, a Catholic institution in Sydney.

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