A group of doctors, religious figures and legal experts is preparing to file a petition with the Constitutional Court against the recently enacted bioethics law.

The "Bioethics Movement Association" announced Thursday that it had formed a task force to draft the petition against the new law, which allows local scientists to conduct research on human embryos for infertility treatment.

The association is comprised of some 20 religious and medical bodies, including an anti-abortion group and a Christian bioethics committee.

The association's chairman, Kim Il-soo, said the biggest problem of the bioethics law is that it enables research on human embryos. Kim claimed that embryos are fully recognized as a living being, saying that embryonic research violates the Constitution's spirit of upholding human dignity.

Under the new law, which went into effect last Saturday, local scientists will be allowed to conduct research on stem cells extracted from cloned human embryos for the purpose of finding new treatments for rare and incurable diseases, including diabetes, leukemia and Alzheimer's.