Scientists from the Roslin Institute, from whence the deceased Dolly the sheep was produced, have been working on getting embryonic stem cells from human embryos created via parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis is the process of getting an egg to divide and grow without sperm.
"So far they have been able to make six embryos of about 50 cells apiece from 300 eggs.
�At the moment we have not managed to get stem cells from these embryos, and that continues to be our ambition,' said Professor Paul de Sousa.
In order to get stem cells embryos of at least 100 cells are needed."
Technically without being fertilized, this isn't a unique life, but a "natural" clone of the egg which if it could develop to term would have an exactly identical set of DNA as it's single female "parent".
It does avoid many of the ethical pitfalls of embryonic research. I'm not jumping on the bandwagon yet, however. Parthenogenesis only occurs naturally in lower orders of animals (worms IIRC), and it seems like it would be very different and unnatural to get this to work with human egg cells. And who knows what other unpleasant surprises the law of unintended consequences might serve up?
Another problem is that of host rejection which is much more common with embryonic stem cells. Of course for woman there would be the possibility of using their own egg cells, but men would be out of luck.
In the short term this might seem vile to some people, but if it saves more lives than it cost then it might be beneficial to society in the long run.
Also, if it doens't work here, at least we wil have compitent scientists showing that it doesn't work and putting an end to this. If it were daffy scientists in a banana republic doing it who didn't get it to work, more people would try it to see if they could.
It could never save more lives than it costs. Every human embryo created via parthenogenesis destroyed for their cells is a life. The scientists already created 50 lives that died before they reached a state where researchers would kill them for their cells.