20 February 2004



Contents


1. The moral imperative for human cloning
2. Gene cheats: the new risk posed to world sport
3. Beware the cowboy cloners
4. NZ scientists seek right to take human embryos
5. Governor intensifies research advocacy, hopes N.J. leads in stem cell
work.
6. The ugly new world of human cloning
7. Italy divided by draconian new fertility controls
8. UK Woman: "I asked Zavos to clone me"
9. The case for cloning
10. Review: Speed-Reading the Book of Life
11. Why Cloning Didn't Happen in U.S.







1. The moral imperative for human cloning


21 February 2004
www.newscientist.com


Ian Wilmut, leader of the Dolly team, says the wrangling over cloning
overshadows its massive potential to cure disease "I envisage that producing
cloned babies would be desirable under certain circumstances"


HUMAN cloning is finally here. But while the Korean team has overcome
some technical obstacles, the political barriers to realising cloning 's
medical
potential remain. Many people object to the idea of any human cloning
research,
even for medical reasons, claiming it will inevitably open the door to
reproductive cloning or, more generally, that experimenting with embryos is
immoral.I believe the opposite: cloning promises such great benefits that it
would be immoral not to do it. That is why a number of UK labs, including my
own, plan to apply to the relevant authorities for permission to study human
cloning here in the UK. And while I remain implacably opposed to
reproductive cloning per se, I do envisage that producing cloned babies
would be desirable under certain circumstances, such as preventing genetic
disease.


The therapeutic promise of human cloning lies in embryonic stem cells, or ES
cells. Derived from 6-day-old embryos, ES cells can form any cell type in
the body, such as nerve or blood cells. It is possible to extract such cells
from spare IVF embryos. But this has a drawback. Researchers have no control
over the genetic make-up of the cells in these embryos. This presents a
problem if such stem cells are used to regenerate tissue destroyed by
accident or disease: if they don 't genetically match the patient, they
could trigger an immune response. Cloning, however, could overcome this
problem and provide patients with tissue-matched stem cells. Although
critics often claim therapeutic cloning would be too expensive and
impractical, I think many of the problems can be tackled. But even if
therapeutic cloning doesn't make it to the clinic, there are other
compelling reasons why we need to develop human cloning technology.


The most imminent development is likely to be using cloning to study
disease, particularly inherited conditions. At present, it is often
impossible to safely take samples of affected cells from living patients,
especially those suffering from genetic
diseases that affect the brain and heart such as Parkinson's disease or
inherited heart arrhythmias. What's more, by the time a patient develops
symptoms, their disease has been progressing for some time. This makes it
hard to find out whether the changes we see in their cells are directly
related to the cause of that disease, or whether they are merely secondary
effects. Ideally, we would like to be able to monitor the progress of the
disease as it develops inside the cells, so that we can home in on its
cause.
Cloning would allow us to recreate these diseased cells, with the same
genetic make-up, outside the patient's body, and watch them develop from
scratch. In principle, we could take, say, a skin cell, make a cloned embryo
and then use its stem cells to create cultures of any cell type we wanted.
These cell cultures would give us the power to do
the kind of sophisticated genetics that we can often only do in animals.


Our team plans to start cloning ES cells from people with the
neurodegenerative condition ALS, or Lou Gehrig 's disease. This progressive
and fatal paralysis strikes people in middle age, robbing them of their
ability to move, peak or breathe unaided.
It is incurable and most victims die within five years of being diagnosed.
The disease affects nerve cells called motor neurons, which are found in the
brain and spine. Owing to their location, it is impossible to remove living
motor neurons for study.
Partly because of this, we have little idea of what causes ALS. We do know
that about 10 per cent of cases are inherited and that a fifth of these are
caused by mutations
in a gene called SOD1 .But the cause of the majority of cases is a mystery.


Using cloning to create cultures of motor neurons from such patients would
help us to track down the causes of the disease. What damages these cells?
Does the damage come from within, or from faulty interactions with other
cells? What's more, being able to study which genes are switched on or off
in such cells could tell us what might
be going wrong in the 90 per cent of ALS patients who did not inherit their
condition. Cloning might even give us the chance to test new therapies.


For all these reasons, my colleagues and I are preparing to apply for a
licence
to clone cells from ALS patients in the UK. As well as benefiting ALS
research,
we hope our techniques could be adapted for research into other
neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Human
cloning also has the potential to revolutionise other areas of biomedical
research. One key area is developing and testing new drugs. It is a
surprising fact that bad reactions to prescription drugs, even when those
drugs are used correctly, kill thousands of people every year. At the
moment, drug companies have no reliable way of predicting who will react
badly.
In most cases, the variation from person to person is due to differences in
the genes that code for the liver enzymes that break down drugs.


Human cloning could help in a number of ways. Researchers could clone and
create cultures of liver cells from families who had suffered bad reactions
to drugs. Such reactions often involve many different enzymes, and being
able to study gene activity in the liver cells of susceptible people would
let researchers identify variations in the key enzymes. Findings from such
research could allow drug companies to test their new drugs more safely and
effectively by letting them screen out susceptible individuals from their
trials.


Such patients could also be warned that certain drugs are not suitable for
them. Drug companies currently use post-mortem liver samples as part of
their extensive preclinical drug safety tests. However, these samples are
often pooled, and the drug sensitivities of the donors are unknown.


Although research is likely to be the first beneficiary of human cloning,
the most exciting developments will come as "therapeutic "cloning: ways to
repair or cure diseased organs or repair genetic defects. Transplants of
stem cells that are genetically identical to their recipients promise new
treatments, such as repairing damaged
heart muscle following a heart attack. Of course, this is still some way
off.


We have technical problems to solve, such as how to get human ES cells to
reliably form different cell types. There are safety aspects, too: we need
to know these cells won't cause problems such as cancer. Lastly, human eggs
are in short supply and this threatens to limit the use of therapeutic
cloning. However, these problems can be addressed. It is true that
therapeutic cloning is unlikely to be practical for routine use.
But not all diseases are equal in terms of expense, and treatments could be
targeted to maximise benefit. An older person with heart disease, for
example, could be treated with stem cells that are not a genetic match, take
drugs to suppress their immune system for the rest of their life, and live
with the side-effects. A younger person might benefit more from stem cells
that match exactly.


What's more, therapies are likely to become cheaper and easier to use as the
technology progresses. One way of overcoming the human egg shortage could be
to use cow eggs, strictly for making stem cells. I personally wouldn't have
an issue with it from a moral point of view because essentially, you can
just see eggs as bags of proteins. But you would have to be even more
careful about the safety aspect.
The most radical use of human cloning technology is to treat inherited
disease -particularly those affecting whole organs that can 't be replaced
by stem cells, such as the lungs. It would also solve many of the problems
that have recently plagued gene therapy, such as the risk of causing cancer.
At the moment, people carrying certain genetic diseases can try to avoid
passing them on by undergoing IVF and having the embryos tested or that only
healthy ones are implanted. But if none of the embryos created is suitable,
the couple face another round of invasive treatment to create more.


There is another way. In March 2003, Thomas Zwaka and James Thomson at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison reported that they had found a way of
precisely replacing faulty genes in ES cells with healthy copies. This
precision means there is little chance of a gene landing in the wrong place
and causing problems. But how can the therapeutic gene be sent to every cell
in the body? This is where cloning could help. First, you would create an
ordinary embryo using IVF. Then you would
take the ES cells from it and correct the diseased gene with genetic
engineering.
However, ES cells by themselves cannot be used to reconstitute the embryo
they
came from. To do this, you would take the nucleus from one of these
corrected
ES cells and transfer it into an egg. The resulting embryo would be the
identical twin of the original embryo, but with the diseased gene corrected
in every one of its cells. This embryo could then be implanted in its
mother's womb to develop into a baby. Although such a child would be a human
clone, it would be a clone of a new individual, not a clone of one of its
parents.


This form of cloning would not create the same ethical and social problems
as reproductive cloning. Of course the question of safety still applies. For
now, we still know far too little about what happens to the genes in a
nucleus during cloning to
consider creating a child in this way. But that should not hold us back from
developing a technology that has such great potential to help so many
people.
Human cloning must not be banned. It could save many thousands of lives.
"It could treat inherited disease and solve the problems facing gene therapy
"


Ian Wilmut is at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh,UK



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2. Gene cheats: the new risk posed to world sport


17 February, 2004
 http://sport.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,10488,1149824,00.html



By Tim Radford, science editor


Lee Sweeney, of the University of Pennsylvania, told the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle that an insulin-like
growth factor delivered by a virus into the skeletal muscles of laboratory
mice resulted in supermice with muscles 15-30% greater than normal. The
muscular strength stayed in sedentary young animals, older mice and even
mice with severe muscular dystrophy.


"The prospects are especially high that muscle-directed gene transfer will
be used by the athletic community for performance enhancement, just as many
drugs are used and abused today," he said. "In many cases, policing such
abuse will be much more difficult than in the case of drugs, since detection
will be difficult."


Rats injected with the same factor, known as IGF-1, grew bigger muscles.
When the rats were subjected to weight training, the genetically treated
muscle gained twice as much strength as the animal's uninjected muscle.


The growth factor levels stayed high in the muscle, but not in the
bloodstream, which was important because too much IGF-1 could lead to
cardiac problems and cancer.


The research was intended to help treat people with muscular diseases. But
as they advanced, such therapies would inevitably find their way into the
healthy population, preventing muscle weakness in old age, he said.


Dr Sweeney spoke at a seminar organised by Richard Pound, chairman of the
World Anti-doping Agency, who said he was not worried about genetically
enhanced super-athletes at the Athens Olympics this year, or even in Beijing
in 2008. But by 2012, sports authorities could be facing a huge new problem.


"We had meetings with geneticists two years ago. Lee Sweeney was there.
Exactly the kinds of things we were afraid we would hear, we heard, which
was that one of the first persons who approached scientists working on this
was an athletics coach, who said 'How can I use what you are doing to make
my game better?'. " Mr Pound said.


"The thought that you might be able to cure muscular dystrophy or diabetes
or something like that by gene transfer therapy some day is wonderful.
What's not so good is you might have an 8ft shot-putter who can throw a 16lb
shot into the crowd."


He said he had asked the scientists to find a direct or indirect test or
some way of "marking" genetic treatments that could be detected.


"As far as drugs are concerned in sport, we let the genie out of the bottle
in the 1960s and 1970s and we have been playing catch-up ever since. What we
would like to do with genetic developments is to be there at the start when
the regulatory and ethical frameworks are being set," Mr Pound said.


Some cheating was self-regulating, he said. Athletes who took the blood
thickening agent EPO, to deliver more oxygen to the muscles, were at risk of
stroke as their pulse rates rose. The human heart simply could not pump
blood that thick. Athletes with overdeveloped muscles who exploded off the
starting blocks too suddenly might rip their tendons off their leg bones
because these had not developed at the same rate as the muscles.


"There is some genetic selection anyway," he said. "If you are a 5ft 2in
Malaysian, you are probably not going to be a basketball star. And if you
are a 7ft Chinese you are not going to be a very good badminton player. If
two basketball players marry, the chances are they will have tall children.
I don't think we are at the stage where a young couple says 'What will we
have this time, dear? A gymnast or a rower?'."



*********************************************************************


3. Beware the cowboy cloners


16 February 2004
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1148849,00.html


by Hilary Rose


Here we go again. Reading the excited claims for the medical benefits likely
to accrue from the Korean veterinary researchers' success in growing cloned
human pre-embryos, one is entitled to feeling a certain deja vu. Heading the
list were those old favourites, treatments for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's
disease. There really needs to be a phrase to describe this researchers'
equivalent of the old charge against doctors of shroud waving.


After all, only a few weeks back we were told that the planned primate
research centre in Cambridge was crucial in the search for treatments for
just the same diseases. The truth is that no one knows if stem cells - the
intended end product of therapeutic cloning - will have such curative
powers, still less the solution to the spinal injuries Christopher Reeve was
hoping for in Friday's Guardian. The right way to find out - the way
biomedical research normally proceeds - is to try the methods first with
laboratory animals. And so far their success, even for the best-understood
condition - Parkinson's - has been limited. This isn't to say that stem
cells aren't a promising technology. But even then one would need to be very
sure that the same results could not be carried out with adult stem cells
without the need to clone embryos.


What is clear is that the rush to experiment with human embryos is, to say
the least, premature, driven more by the lust for scientific glory than a
clear sense of the medical imperatives. As the procedures involved in
therapeutic cloning are almost identical to those needed for reproductive
cloning, the Korean achievement brings that closer, too. This inexorably
opens the doors to those whom Suzi Leather, the chairwoman of the Human
Embryology and Fertilisation Authority, calls "cowboy cloners". It is this
weakness in the medical case for human therapeutic cloning that throws the
moral issues into such sharp relief. So why shouldn't we be reassured when
she tells us that the Korean research was "ethical"?


The project was accepted by the Korean ethical committee, but ethical
standards are by no means uniform, so for the one American member of the
team such work would be illegal in several US states. And then there is the
special problem of Britain, which pushed earlier and harder for stem cell
research than most other countries and now has the most liberal research
regime. Just how ethical are we? The Human Genetics Commission has wide
public representation, but on the hot issue of cloning the government was
certainly not risking such public debate. Instead, it set up a separate
expert committee that concluded that stem cell research on specially created
embryos was acceptable.


W here are the embryos to come from? In the US, discussion about the risks
to women is transparent. But the UK experts' report on stem cell research
speaks blandly of "individuals whose eggs or sperm are used to create the
embryos" to mask the differential bodily risk for women and men. When a
woman and her partner go for IVF, she has to decide if the discomfort and
risk involved in having the hormonal treatment and surgery are worth the
chance of a child; all he has to do is masturbate into a test tube. Deciding
to accept some risk for clear benefit is at the heart of medical ethics. It
is a little harder to see how researchers asking women to accept such
invasive procedures for no personal benefit are acting ethically. If things
go wrong (and they do in up to 20% of cases) IVF procedures can result in
severe health problems.


How did our British experts manage to ignore this gender problem? The answer
is embarrassingly obvious - the stem cell committee of 14 included only one
woman. By contrast, the House of Lords select committee discussion of stem
cells was both less dominated by technical experts and much more cautious.
It wrote: "The committee believes that embryos should not be created
specifically for research purposes unless there is a demonstrable need." The
Lords committee consisted of six women and four men, and at least one of
them knew her way around nursing and midwifery.


When is British public discussion going to face the fact that reproductive
engineering does not impact evenly on the genders, and that the ethical
discussion of bioethics demands fair gender representation on advisory
committees? There is a minister who is supposed to look after women's
interests, but it seems that she has either gone to sleep on the job or
doesn't see that the direction of biomedical research could be part of it.


Complacency about British ethical standards is no substitute for effective
control. The government thought that it had ruled out reproductive cloning,
and it took a legal challenge from the Pro- Life Alliance to demonstrate
otherwise. The problem of medical tourism by would-be parents is trivial
compared with the need to control the search by biomedical researchers for
countries with soft standards - whether Britain or Korea.


Hilary Rose is a sociologist at City University


*********************************************************************


4. NZ scientists seek right to take human embryos


16 February 2004
 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3549469&thesection=news&t
hesubsection=general


By SIMON COLLINS


New Zealand researchers want the right to destroy human embryos in order to
grow stem cells that might one day provide cures for conditions such as
Parkinson's disease.
A lineup of scientists at the NZ Bioethics Conference in Dunedin at the
weekend called for a relaxation of the ban on taking stem cells from
embryos.
Most urged New Zealand to follow Britain and Singapore in allowing
scientists to create embryos specifically for the purpose of taking stem
cells from them.
If the Government was not prepared to go that far, they suggested a
compromise allowing stem cells to be taken from surplus embryos created for
in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).
At present, these surplus embryos are destroyed anyway as soon as a couple
has had a child.
The stem cell issue is back in the headlines after South Korean researchers
succeeded last week in cloning 30 egg cells taken from Korean women and
growing the new cells to form embryos without the need of male sperm.
The researchers then took stem cells from one of the embryos and grew them
into a variety of cells, including eye cells, muscle cells and bone cells.
Stem cells are cells that can develop into any specific kind of cell in the
body.
At a very early stage in embryo development, each human stem cell has the
capacity to grow into an entire human being.
But Otago University anatomy professor Gareth Jones told the conference that
actually even the earliest stem cells in a newly fertilised embryo could
only grow into an entire person in the right chemical environment inside a
woman's womb.
Taking stem cells from an embryo in a laboratory dish in order to grow new
brain cells for a patient with Parkinsons, for example, did not therefore
represent destroying the "life" of the embryo.
"Ethical debate should not be reduced to 'potential for life'. Far more
attention should be given to the environment," he said.
In particular, he argued that it would be justified to take stem cells from
surplus IVF embryos created in the laboratory by injecting sperm into an
egg.
Professor Don Evans of the Otago Bioethics Centre said there was evidence
that stem cells from freshly fertilised embryos were more likely to grow
than those taken from frozen IVF embryos.
He said it might therefore be better to take stem cells from surplus embryos
as soon as they were fertilised, rather than waiting until the end of the
IVF process nine months or more later. The head of the National Ethics
Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction, Professor Sylvia Rumball, said her
committee expected to complete a discussion paper in the next month on the
use of embryonic stem cells.
Last month the committee gave Health Minister Annette King draft guidelines
under which couples undergoing IVF could donate surplus embryos to other
couples. Mrs King is expected to issue these for public comment.
Professor Rumball said her committee had not yet received any requests from
New Zealand researchers to extract stem cells from human embryos.
But scientists at Auckland University have used stem cells from certain
adult tissues to regrow brain cells, offering hope to victims of
Huntington's disease.
Adult stem cell research is allowed because it does not involve destroying
an embryo. But Professor Jones said there was evidence that adult cells
could only replace other cells in a more limited way than cells taken from a
new embryo.



*********************************************************************


5. Governor intensifies research advocacy, hopes N.J. leads in stem cell
work.


15 February, 2004
 http://www.nj.com/news/expresstimes/nj/index.ssf?/base/news-4/10768412694690
.xml


By TERRENCE DOPP


TRENTON -- Gov. James E. McGreevey on Friday stepped up calls to entice stem
cell researchers to the Garden State.


"By encouraging stem cell research, we will not only be providing an
environment that will benefit the health of New Jersey's citizens but will
also provide for increased investment in New Jersey's bio-medical industry,
more high-paying jobs and prestige for our research universities," McGreevey
wrote to Health Commissioner Clifton Lacey in a letter asking him to
recommend ways to boost stem cell research.



"What we hope to have is that New Jersey becomes a place this type of
research" is enhanced, said Micah Rasmussen, a McGreevey spokesman. "We
certainly respect every opinion, we certainly do. But this type of research
is too important and too critical."


Lacey's office did not return a call Friday seeking comment.


McGreevey signed a bill in January encouraging research into the use of
undifferentiated, building-block cells as a means to cure diseases such as
cancer, diabetes and heart disease.


Opponents see the bill as a way to get around President George W. Bush's
decree that research involve 67 existing lines of the cells. But supporters
contend the research could lead to a cure for everything from cancer to
brain injuries.


McGreevey's request came the day after South Korean scientists announced
they had successfully created human embryos through cloning for research
purposes. In making the announcement, the researchers also called for strong
regulations against reproductive cloning.


The scientists created the embryos from extracted stem cells, which have not
yet split themselves into specialized types and scientists believe have the
ability to effectively become any type of cell.


While most researchers believe these cells could cure Parkinson's disease
and Alzheimer's disease, debate over the Garden State legislation revolves
around the distinction between "adult" and "embryonic" stem cells.


According to scientists, adult cells are the type all humans have within
their bodies during the course of their lives while embryonic stem cells are
cells at the beginning phase of life, making them potentially easier to
grow.


Researchers have said the technology is too new to know if either adult or
embryonic cells will be effective.


But some groups such as New Jersey Right to Life opposed the bill and
McGreevey's push for research because they said cloning would be necessary
to create embryonic cells.


Those cloned embryos would then be killed for the stem cells, one activist
said.


"It's a brazen admission that the bill he signed in January does indeed
allow human cloning and it demonstrates his mad zeal to draw media attention
and cloning zealots to New Jersey," said Marie Tasy, public and legislative
affairs director for Right to Life.


The measure cleared the Senate in November 2002 in a 25-0 vote. The Assembly
approved it more than a year later Dec. 15 by a vote of 41-32 with seven
abstentions.


Like the original legislation sponsoring them, lawmakers' opinions were
split on McGreevey's call for increased research in New Jersey.


Assemblyman Michael Doherty, a conservative Republican, said he is in favor
of research on the adult variety of stem cells but is opposed to any testing
involving the embryonic contingent.


"With embryonic stem cells, you're essentially creating life for research
purposes and then ending that life," said Doherty, R-Hunterdon/Warren. "I
think the McGreevey policy is absolutely wrong. I think he's just trying to
placate the pro-abortion crowd."


Assemblyman Douglas Fisher, D-3 of Cumberland, disagreed, saying the bill
prevents human cloning.


"It's something that is going to take place whether it's regulated or not.
Frankly, the government has to have a hand in the process," Fisher said. "We
certainly are encouraging stem cell research but we know it is constantly
going to be challenged."


Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance, R-Hunterdon/Warren, said he abstained
on the bill based upon the cloning issue.


"The situation in South Korea is very serious and I think it has a very
negative potential," Lance said. "I think the Legislature should make sure
this type of situation does not occur in New Jersey. The South Korea
situation worries all of us. Here in New Jersey, we should monitor it."


New Jersey is not alone in debating stem cell research, which has been at
the center of debate in the field of bioethics.


The law bans human cloning, making it a first-degree crime punishable by 10
to 20 years imprisonment or a $200,000 fine or both.


But in one controversial aspect, the law approved by McGreevey and the
Legislature defines "cloning of a human being" as the replication of a human
individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material through the egg,
embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual.


Detractors contend this is too vague and could allow a cloned baby to be
born then killed for research.


New Jersey Right to Life also argued the bill allows a woman to be implanted
with a cloned fetus and leaves government powerless to prevent her from
giving birth.



*********************************************************************


6. The ugly new world of human cloning


13 February 2004
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/02/13/dl1301
.xml


The announcement that a team of scientists at Seoul University in South
Korea has successfully cloned human embryos will leave many people vaguely
uneasy. Some will feel confused in the face of what is usually presented as
the inevitable march of progress.


We are assured by scientists engaged in this research that the stem cells to
be "harvested" by dissecting cloned embryos have the potential to alleviate
all kinds of incurable conditions, from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's.


Suzi Leather, chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority,
insists that, unlike "reproductive" cloning, which would be unethical and
illegal, this "therapeutic" cloning is not only permissible but "very
exciting". She "would very much welcome an application".


Two years after the Government rushed through legislation to permit human
cloning, no scientist has applied for a cloning licence. Why not, if the
potential benefits are so "very great"?


It is legal to create cloned embryos, as long as they are destroyed rather
than implanted in the womb. The moral distinction between therapeutic and
reproductive cloning boils down to the purpose for which the embryo is used.


Reproductive cloning is condemned because of the high probability that a
cloned baby would be born with terrible deformities. What, though, if clones
could be screened for abnormalities?


The distinction between therapeutic and reproductive cloning breaks down,
because it is artificial. Once human cloning becomes accepted, it is
perfectly conceivable that foetus farming and eugenics will follow.


Do the medical benefits of therapeutic cloning outweigh the moral
objections? The evidence so far is unclear. In practice, adult stem cells,
usually taken from the patient, have proved more effective in repairing
damaged tissues.


Embryonic stem cells, though in theory infinitely adaptable, are hard to
control and potentially cancerous. It is of course possible that further
research might enable scientists to overcome these obstacles.


Since stem cells derived from the umbilical cord are readily available,
however, the burden of proof rests on scientists to show that embryonic stem
cells really are necessary.


Human cloning is symbolic of a society that seeks to prolong life at all
costs, even at the cost of sacrificing the embryo for the sake of research
that might (or might not) help to cure the degenerative diseases
characteristic of old age.


This implies a moral vacuum, now filled by a technocratic, utilitarian ethic
in which the embryo is treated as a means rather than an end.


The US Congress and several European legislatures have grappled with this
issue in a manner that puts our Parliament to shame. Legislators must not
abdicate their responsibility to impose limitations on research, still less
allow Parliament's intentions to be ignored, as has happened all too often
in the past.


The Korean clones remind us that the future of the human race is too
important to be left to Suzi Leather and the scientists. At stake is the
meaning of life.



*********************************************************************


7. Italy divided by draconian new fertility controls


12 February 2004
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2004%2F02%2F12%2Fwf
ert12.xml


By Bruce Johnston in Rome


Under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, Italy's parliament has passed
draconian restrictions on fertility treatments.


The legislation transforms Italy from a country where a 62-year-old can give
birth to one where using donor sperm or eggs is banned, forcing sperm banks
to close down, and 24,000 embryos to be "put up for adoption".


It was passed amid fierce opposition in and out of parliament, especially by
feminists and gay rights groups.


As MPs - including some on the opposition benches with strong Catholic
convictions - voted in favour, some women members donned white masks to
symbolise the way they said the law attacked women's rights.


Many opponents called for a recourse to other legal measures to try to have
the law stopped.


"It is totally illogical and out of keeping with the times," Antonio Di
Pietro, a former magistrate turned opposition senator said of the law.


The provisions rein in Italy's "Wild West" world of assisted conception,
forbidding treatment of women beyond the normal child-bearing age.


Surrogate mothers are also outlawed, and fertility treatment restricted to
"stable" heterosexual couples, excluding single mothers or same-sex couples.


It also bans widely accepted techniques such as insemination with donated
sperm or freezing of embryos, which can often help women avoid more rounds
of hormone treatment to stimulate egg production needed for in vitro
fertilisation.


The bill, which needs only the approval of President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to
become law, is reported to make Italy the only country in Europe to ban
third-party insemination.


Screening of embryos for abnormalities or genetic disorders, even for
couples with a history of genetic disease, will also be illegal.


Feminists and other critics fear the law will encourage strongly Catholic
politicians to try repealing other laws known to have dismayed the Vatican,
above all those introducing divorce and legalising abortion.


"Why is it that what the Pope and the Church consider to be a sin has to be
automatically made into a law of the state?" asked the Left-of-centre La
Repubblica yesterday.


The bill was passed in a free vote in the Chamber of Deputies by 277 to 222,
with three MPs abstaining.



*********************************************************************


8. UK Woman: "I asked Zavos to clone me".


25 January 2004
 http://www.sundayherald.com/39492


By Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor


Cherry Mosteshar's greatest desire in life was to have children. But her
dream of becoming a mother ended when, after a long illness, she had her
womb and ovaries removed in her 30s.


As Mosteshar could not produce eggs, no fertility treatment could help her.
The freelance writer from Oxford accepted her fate until she heard that
reproductive cloning could offer her hope.


Now Mosteshar has become the first British woman to admit that she has
written to American cloning pioneer, Dr Panos Zavos, who runs a fertility
clinic in Kentucky, asking him to create her exact genetic replica.


And even if Zavos cannot clone Mosteshar, providing her with the child she
so desperately wants, the 47-year-old is volunteering herself as a guinea
pig to help progress cloning technology.


"I had been struggling since my teens to hold on to my womb and ovaries, but
I suffered from endometriosis and other complications, including
pre-cancerous cells," she said. "Childbirth wasn't possible for me. I would
never have been able to get pregnant. I had tried for years.


"The doctors were telling me that I would have to have my womb and ovaries
removed, but I was so resistant to losing all my reproductive organs. What I
really wanted from life was children. But I am not a tragic case. One
accepts what life brings, but if the technology is there, I feel we should
be using it.


"I believe we progress through research. To have research held back for no
good reason saddens me. If women can get IVF - and that is seen as so
acceptable - now that it is possible to clone someone, I don't see why there
should be such a stigma.


"Even if I were just part of the research, even if it did not work for me, I
would feel like I was helping it move forward and that others would benefit
later.


"I live in Oxford and know a few people in the field of genetic research.
They are quite adamant that cloning is something they could do, if it wasn't
for political reluctance."


When Mosteshar saw Zavos on television last week, claiming that he had
implanted the first cloned embryo into a 35-year-old woman, she decided to
get in touch, to congratulate him and offer her assistance, in any way she
could.


" When I heard about what Dr Zavos was doing, I wrote to congratulate him on
his courage for going ahead with this. I told him about myself and said that
if he felt he could help someone in my position, I would be happy to
volunteer.


"Although my cells would be used, someone else would need to carry the
child. I do not have a scientific mind. All I can do is be enthusiastic and
offer myself as part of the research."


Mosteshar, according to Zavos, was just one of 150 volunteers who contacted
him following last weekend's announcement that he had transferred the cloned
embryo into the woman's womb at a secret location.


"As a result of last week's press conference, we have been contacted by 150
volunteers from around the world, including the UK," said Zavos.


"One woman from the UK wrote to say, 'I would do anything for you Dr Zavos,
I would be your guinea pig.' We have been overwhelmed by women wishing to
participate. They have a difficulty and this technology is proceeding for
them."


Zavos is expected to disclose early this week whether the cloned embryo he
claims to have already implanted in a 35-year-old woman's womb has survived.
He has estimated that it has a 20 to 30% chance of survival.


Like Mosteshar, volunteers who have contacted Zavos all have their own
reasons and often tragic circumstances behind wishing to clone a human
being.


One such family is the Mastertons from Monifieth near Dundee. Alan and
Louise Masterton now say they would have considered trying to clone their
only daughter Nicole, who died aged three in a bonfire accident in 1999, had
the technology been available and safe at the time.


This is not a possibility for the Mastertons, as they have not preserved
Nicole's tissue. But they argue that, had the technology been an option,
they would have regarded the clone as Nicole's twin.


Louise is herself an identical twin and the couple insist that if the
procedure were shown to be safe, cloning would be no different.


Alan said: "My wife is an identical twin, a natural twin, but her sister is
very different from her. I know we would not be reproducing Nicole. If we
could produce Nicole's twin then that is something we would seriously
consider; if some doctor had come to me when Nicole had died and had said
that he was reasonably sure that this was safe, we would have had to
consider it.


"If we had kept tissue, we would have thought seriously about it unless, of
course, our boys had come to us and said, 'We don't want to do that, Dad.' I
suspect a lot of the choices we make come down to our own individual
circumstances and I suspect that, when cloning becomes safe and practical,
many will make that choice."


Mosteshar denies claims that people who want to create a genetic replica of
themselves are egotistical.


"Isn't everyone who has a baby selfish in wanting to reproduce themselves?
Why else would people want children if it were not to pass on their own
genes?


"I do not believe that the baby produced would be any less of a human
being."



*********************************************************************


9.The case for cloning
Scientists have cloned a human embryo, prompting both delight and fear.
Trust us, says geneticist Robin Lovell-Badge - rather than doppelganger
babies there will be a medical revolution that saves lives


By Malcolm Doney


15 February 2004
 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=491455


I was very excited by the news that a group of scientists, mostly from South
Korea, had succeeded in making 30 early human embryos using a cloning
technique similar to that used to create Dolly the sheep. These early
embryos had been created by taking eggs donated by women, stripping them of
the unique DNA at their centre, and replacing it with adult body cells
supplied by the same women. The embryos were kept in a Petri dish until they
had reached the blastocyst stage, being just balls of 100 or so cells. Then
the scientists attempted to isolate the inner cells.


The aim was to generate human embryonic stem cells that would be genetically
identical to the donor women. Stem cells are those which create further
identical cells when they divide. They can be used for healing purposes as
replacements for damaged cells.


The Koreans did not intend to implant the embryos into surrogate mothers. No
sensible scientist would consider the use of cloning in order to give birth
to living human beings because it is far too dangerous. I personally have no
problem with the principle of cloning humans but we do know from work with
animals that serious problems develop between the early embryo and birth.
There are lots of spontaneous abortions - and the chances are that any
babies conceived in this way would be born deformed or develop severe
abnormalities. Cloning live people would not be safe.


However, cloning embryos does offer exciting possibilities for medical
science, and the news announced on Thursday was of an important achievement.
This was good research, conducted well, carefully peer-reviewed and
published in Science, a highly rated journal. Critically, it simply says
that so-called "therapeutic cloning" is possible in humans.


I have worked with embryonic stem cells from mice for more than 20 years.
Because these are derived from such early embryos before any specialisation
has occurred, they have the ability to make any cell type in the body. They
can do so in the dish, if the right conditions can be found, and they can do
so if reintroduced back into a mouse embryo. I know how important they have
been for increasing our knowledge about early embryonic development and how
particular tissues and cell types form as the embryo develops.


They have allowed us to explore gene function: what does a gene actually do,
how critical is it, what happens when the gene is mutated, and so on. They
have led to the creation of many models of human genetic disease - mice that
can be worked on to search for cures, either short-cutting studies directly
on humans or allowing experiments that would be impossible or ethically
unsound.


Because human embryonic stem (HuES) cells can probably give rise to any cell
type in the body, they offer enormous potential for therapies based on
transplanting cells into a patient. This is the same idea as bone marrow
transplants, which have also been around for a long time, but with the
potential to cure a much broader range of problems, including many
degenerative diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis,
or to repair damage due to accidental trauma. HuES cells can be used to
better understand how cells make decisions about whether to divide or turn
into a specialised cell type - knowledge that could then be fed back into
ways of manipulating cells directly within the patient. Stem cells are also
found in adult tissue, and there is much excitement about their potential
use, but since we do not know nearly enough to even make educated guesses as
to whether they, or embryonic stem cells, will provide the best approach for
therapies of the future, it seems silly not to pursue both sources with
equal vigour.


HuES cells provide an alternative to experiments directly on humans. This
must be a good thing. They can be used to study aspects of genetic disease
in the culture dish. They can be used to screen for toxicity or
effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. They can provide a source of human cells
for studying how gene activity is controlled, and ways of controlling this
with drugs, or to investigate how pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria,
interact with specific cell types. We should be able to use viruses as a
vehicle for reintroducing healthy genes to a damaged body - and work on HuES
will help us understand how best to do this. These are all potentially very
important applications.


So why combine this with cloning? The South Korean scientists managed to
produce just one line of cells from their 30 embryos, but it was genetically
identical to the woman who had donated the source material. If she developed
a problem like diabetes, or suffered an accident that damaged her spinal
cord, then specialised cells made from this HuES cell line would not be
recognised as foreign by her immune system. "Therapeutic cloning" is
essentially taking a biopsy from a patient and turning it into useful cells
that can then be used for therapy without fear of graft rejection, which is
the most common reason why transplants fail.


Of course, this type of treatment is a long way off widespread use, and it
is not going to be cheap. We also need to know how reliable the method will
be. Moreover, if it is to be used clinically, it will have to be as
personalised medicine: we are not talking about pills from the pharmacist.
But this could be a once-only treatment that will improve the quality of
life for an individual and extend life in a productive way.


The current cost of treating someone with diabetes and the complications
that can arise from this are huge, as are those for cardiovascular problems,
or any degenerative disease that requires long-term care. Using cloned cells
may make it all unnecessary. And if we can put somebody's life back together
after a traumatic accident using this technology, then how can we not
justify some expense?


However, I think the first applications of this exciting research will be
for studying disease or the interactions of genes and drugs. "Therapeutic
cloning" can allow scientists to establish HuES cell lines from individuals
with genetic diseases, giving us a chance to understand better how that
disease develops. For example, we could study what is wrong with motor
neurons in patients with motor neurone disease, which cannot be done in the
patients themselves. It may help us find the genetic cause of rare diseases
where there are simply too few patients to work with. And it can allow drug
companies to better test potential pharmaceuticals for their effects on
different people - why some respond well and others adversely or not at
all - and to do this before marketing the drug. All of this explains my
excitement, which I am pleased to share.


Dr Robin Lovell-Badge is head of the division of developmental genetics at
the MRC National Institute for Medical Research


The case for caution


Cut the hype, says Britain's favourite medical scientist, Robert Winston.
Enthusiasts for cloning are asking for trouble if they make exaggerated
claims on behalf of a technology that is undeveloped and fraught with
dangers


It is difficult to understand the massive media interest in cloning. Mere
mention of this seven-letter word seems to send many of my journalist
friends into a complete spasm. It can't be because of alarm at the prospect
of making identical people - there are at least 25,000 human clones in
Britain already. These are, of course, identical twins - and these naturally
produced clones are closer to their twin sibling than any that might be made
artificially. This is because identical twins are conceived at the same time
and in the same environment, are nurtured in the same womb, and born into an
identical milieu. As likely as not, they will eat the same meals and share
the same bedroom, at least during the most formative part of their life:
childhood. Apart from the fact that artificially made clones would not be
genetically identical to their progenitor, their nurture would be wholly
different - and nurture is vitally important in how we turn out.


Perhaps the latest report of human cloning is of interest to newspapers
because it emanates from Korea. There is a perception that experiments
happening in that part of the world are faintly mysterious and
controversial, and are less likely to be subject to ethical scrutiny. But
this is not true of the medical science in South Korea, where this work was
done. I have just returned from a conference on stem cells and cloning in
Colorado, in the US. Some 17 papers read there were from South Korea and all
demonstrated excellent work carried out to scrupulous ethical standards.
Indeed, the latest report on cloning is legitimate research and would be
perfectly legal in Britain. But this work was not done in the UK. Sadly, we
have such a diminishing science base and spend so much time worrying about
regulation that the temptation is for British scientists to avoid this area.
Work that might have been completed here has again been done by skilful
colleagues elsewhere.


The Government's regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority (HFEA), is not blameless. Applying for a licence is a bureaucratic
process, even after gaining ethical approval from institutional ethics
committees. And these committees are strict. Moreover, the HFEA, with the
Medical Research Council, insists that a condition of any licence for
generating human embryonic stem cells is that a proportion of the cells
(derived with or without a cloning procedure) must be donated to a "stem
cell bank".


This means that patients donating their embryos often feel their genetic
privacy might be invaded in future. This has contributed to the grave
shortage of embryos for legitimate research. The HFEA should never forget
that women who donate embryos, created as a by-product of their IVF
treatment, are genuinely altruistic. Women often fear that, in giving up a
randomly selected embryo for research, they may relinquish the very embryo
that might give their best chance of pregnancy.


The announcement of the Korean research was greeted with much enthusiasm.
The press, doubtless encouraged by the scientists concerned, announced that
this cloning experiment holds huge hope for the treatment of an
extraordinary mix of serious disorders, such as Alzheimer's and heart
failure. Some exaggerated claims are being made. Of course, we now know that
human embryonic cells are likely to have the potential to develop into a
complete range of different tissues. But while such so-called stem cells may
eventually help palliate some brain disease, it seems unlikely that complex
and incompletely understood degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's will
be cured with them.


Moreover, stem cell technology faces huge problems. Scientific papers read
in Colorado emphasised how difficult it seems to be to guarantee pure,
healthy tissue from stem cells, whatever their source. Many tissues derived
from these cells do not function normally; others seem to have the potential
for developing cancers. And cloning, the particular technology to produce
stem cells used by these Korean scientists in an attempt to avoid problems
of transplant rejection, has additional hazards.


It is doubtful whether any scientific group anywhere in the world has
definitely produced an entirely normal cloned animal. Whether sheep, mice or
other species, most clones seem to have genes that don't work properly. A
cloned sheep may occasionally look normal, but many have had obvious
abnormalities. Many of their genes, such as those concerned with vital
cellular functions such as growth and development, don't function correctly.


And what is true of the genes of intact animals is likely to be true of
genes in their organs. So cloned animals such as pigs are unlikely to be a
good source of healthy kidneys or hearts to be used as donor organs for
human treatments. Cloned human embryos could be expected to present similar
problems. Just as any child born from cloning is at risk of being abnormal,
so cloned embryos may well produce abnormal cells or tissues that would be
too dangerous to use for transplants. It would be unthinkable to inject
cloned embryonic nerve cells into the brain of somebody suffering from
Parkinson's disease, only to find that they develop cancer, or that their
brain cells stop working.


Perhaps the most exciting opportunity held out by stem cell research is
unexpected. Understanding stem cells offers possibilities for new cancer
treatments. Many cancers, such as the common ones of the breast and bowel,
may be caused by changes in stem cells we all carry in different parts of
our body. While the embryo is the richest source of stem cells that can
develop into any cell type, many adult organs have cells capable of maturing
into a considerable range of tissues. A rich source of stem cells is our
skin. Human skin stem cells carried at the base of the epidermis can form
the scaly protective cells we all know as "skin". But equally, skin stem
cells form follicles that grow hair, and glandular cells producing oil or
sweat. The breast and bowel both contain stem cells, and there is increasing
evidence that most cancers of these organs may develop from their stem
cells. So by understanding how to regulate the growth of these stem cells we
are likely to discover effective methods for many cancer treatments in the
future.


I remain worried about the bizarre hype surrounding cloning. The Korean
research is useful because it will add to our understanding of stem cells.
But it is a long way from contributing to a successful medical treatment for
anything. People are mistrustful of scientists and are reluctant to accept
scientific advice. We have seen mistrust demonstrated in the reluctance to
accept the safety of the measles vaccine. The outcome is that there may be a
serious epidemic and children may die unnecessarily. And if we scientists
are foolish enough to exaggerate what we might be able achieve with other
projects, public mistrust will increase. We can be sure that the backlash
will be huge when our exaggerations concern controversial areas like
cloning.


Robert Winston is professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London,
and director of NHS research and development for Hammersmith Hospital


Timeline


1984 Danish scientist Steen Willadsen, working for the British Agricultural
Research Council, clones a lamb from sheep embryo cells, using a technique
known as nuclear transfer, the placing of a cell nucleus into a hollowed-out
unfertilised egg.


1995 Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh
clone a sheep (named after country singer Dolly Parton) using cells taken
from the mammary of a six-year-old ewe. Six years later Dolly is put down,
suffering from progressive lung disease, a condition only usually found in
much older animals.


1998 Advanced Cell Technology says it has cloned primitive human embryonic
stem cells by fusing a human somatic cell with a cow's egg, opening the
possibility of supplies of stem cells for transplant medicine.


2002 His Holiness Rae, leader of the Raelian Movement, which believes humans
are cloned aliens, claims to be behind the birth of Eve, the world's first
cloned human baby. No proof has since been forthcoming.


2003 Millionaire John Sperling funds the first cloning of a pet, a calico
kitten called Cc (Copy Cat). Other animals, including three pigs who died of
heart attacks, have since been cloned.


2004 Woo Suk Hwang and his team at the Seoul National University announce
they have cloned the first human embryo, using a similar technique to the
one that produced Dolly the sheep.



*********************************************************************


10. Review: Speed-Reading the Book of Life
'THE GENOME WAR: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save
the World.' By James Shreeve.
403 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95.


15 February 2004
 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/books/review/15PAPINET.html?ex=1077426000&
en=767c5140d170a759&ei=5062


By DAVID PAPINEAU


The great genome race between J. Craig Venter and the publicly financed
Human Genome Project lasted barely two years. It began in May 1998, when
Venter, a renegade scientist, established a commercial company to finish
sequencing human DNA some years ahead of the public program, and ended at
the White House in June 2000, when both sides agreed they had passed the
finish line simultaneously.


In this brief period, Venter's company not only ordered the 3 billion DNA
letters in the human ''book of life'' but also sequenced the genome of the
fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a warm-up. Venter first had to activate
300 temperamental sequencing machines, at $300,000 each, in order to read
the letters on millions of short fragments of DNA. Then he needed the
second-biggest computer in the world, to figure out how all these fragments
fit together in the overall genome. Finishing this job in two years was an
extraordinary achievement.


Yet, for all his success, Venter, a Vietnam veteran and former surfer, is
widely seen as an incarnation of evil. To many scientists he is ''Darth''
Venter, a once pure researcher who joined the dark forces of Mammon. In this
view, the Human Genome Project offered a careful, accurate analysis of the
genome for the benefit of future investigators, while Venter's aim was
simply a quick and dirty botch-up, its only purpose to gain commercial
rights to something that should be the common possession of humanity.


While the genome race was on, it received blow-by-blow coverage on the
science pages, and not a few books have followed since then. The special
selling point of ''The Genome War,'' by James Shreeve, is that he enjoyed
unrestricted access to Venter's company, Celera Genomics, from its founding.
So we get the inside story of Venter's ups and downs as he enlisted quirky
laboratory personnel, dealt with critical machine failures and politicked
nonstop. It all makes for a gripping tale. Venter's sequencing strategy
depended on radical techniques, and it was by no means predetermined that he
wouldn't fall flat on his face.


In addition to his verbatim accounts of events at Celera, Shreeve gives
thumbnail sketches of the key players on the Human Genome Project, plus
interview-based reconstructions of their crucial meetings. He makes it clear
why both groups had to settle their differences. Because of the huge
publicity, far more people were interested in the race than could understand
the result. This meant each side was hostage to the danger that the other
would suddenly orchestrate a fanfare and declare itself the winner. In a
way, that's pretty much what happened, except that they did it together.
Both admitted that their announced results were far less polished than
originally intended.


Curiously, of all the actors in Shreeve's story, it is Venter who comes
least to life. We are repeatedly told how he rubs people the wrong way -- a
number of independent sources report that he is widely disliked -- but we
aren't really shown why. Venter comes across like an affable and
enthusiastic uncle. One gets the feeling that Shreeve may have been a little
bit too overawed to put in all the warts. The reader is left puzzled how
this amiable buffer has managed to move scientific mountains.


Personal unpopularity scarcely explains the widespread vilification of
Venter. It is not as if scientists are generally known for their people
skills. Nor does the accusation that Venter prostituted science to commerce
fully account for his denigration. He made it clear from the start that his
company never intended to make money from its basic sequencing of the
genome; indeed, the raw sequence has been made generally available. True,
Celera did use its privileged position to hunt for sections of DNA that
could be patented for medical applications. But that raises wider issues
about patenting policy. Many scientists think the authorities grant patents
to mere fragments of DNA too liberally. But if that is so, it is scarcely
Venter's fault. In any case, involvement in gene patenting is widespread
among scientists, including many in the Human Genome Project.


It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the real objection to Venter is that
as a scientist he came up by the back stairs. His background was anything
but Ivy League, and until his 40's he was a brain chemist rather than a
member of the close-knit community of geneticists. Once he did become part
of the gene-sequencing business, he had plenty of radical ideas and an
abundance of energy, but this didn't stop his grant applications being
turned down for his supposed lack of expertise. Yet throughout the 1990's he
repeatedly showed that he could indeed do just what the genetics
establishment said he couldn't.


In the case of the overall human genome, Venter's divergence from orthodoxy
centered on a technique with the alarming name of the ''whole genome
shotgun.'' The idea was to use a supercomputer to piece together the book of
life from millions of tiny random phrases. If this worked, it would render
redundant most of the laborious alternative techniques on which the public
program was based, not to mention its payroll of thousands of employees. Not
surprisingly, the genetic establishment closed ranks and collectively poured
technical ridicule on the ''whole shotgun'' strategy.


Venter, however, managed to persuade his backers to stake $300 million on
his confidence that the problems were not insuperable. Once more, his
judgment seems vindicated. Not everybody is convinced that Venter did
exactly what he promised: in the flurry to meet the deadline, both sides cut
corners, and some ardent anti-Venterites insist Venter didn't use the
''whole shotgun'' but took a helping hand from the public program's results.
From a larger perspective this looks like quibbling. Venter's technique has
now been successfully used to sequence other complex genomes, not just by
Celera but by the public program itself.


Shreeve gives the story an epilogue: in 2002, Venter was sacked by the
directors of Celera Genomics, who wanted to focus on the pharmacological
potential of their patent rights. Venter has since set up a research
foundation and is aiming to genetically engineer a microbe that will create
energy from waste products of fossil fuels. This may seem like a long shot,
but the past advises one not to bet against J. Craig Venter.




*********************************************************************


11. Why Cloning Didn't Happen in U.S.


13 February 2004
 http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62277,00.html


By Kristen Philipkoski


SEATTLE -- The United States is supposed to be the most scientifically and
technologically advanced country in the world. So why did South Korean
scientists announce here Thursday that they were the first to develop cells
that could lead to the biggest revolution medicine has ever seen?


The researchers, led by veterinary cloning expert Woo Suk Hwang and
gynecologist Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University in South Korea,
were the first to create a cloned human embryo and derive stem cells from
it -- a significant advance toward using the cells to replace those damaged
by a wide range of diseases and disorders, from Alzheimer's to spinal cord
injuries.


Researchers say there are many reasons why South Koreans -- and not
Americans -- were standing at the podium Thursday at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Seattle, not
the least of which is the support of the federal government.


"Government support is key, absolutely," said Rudolf Jaenisch, a cloning
expert and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge. "In the United States nobody could do this because the United
States does not have government support."


President Bush placed a moratorium on spending federal funds to develop new
embryonic stem-cell lines in August 2001. He also has said he supports a ban
on all cloning research, including therapeutic cloning, which researchers
hope can lead to important new treatments for diseases.


Because the embryo is destroyed when stem cells are extracted, some
religious and anti-abortion groups contend the process is murder. A handful
of bills seeking to ban cloning have made the rounds in Congress. Some bills
aimed to ban reproductive cloning, others would ban both types. No
legislation has passed, however, in part because some cloning opponents have
drawn links between therapeutic and reproductive cloning, and will not
support a bill that allows either type of cloning. Rogue scientists have
threatened to use reproductive cloning to produce babies, although they
offer no scientific proof that they're close to reaching that goal. Some
opponents fear that if therapeutic cloning is permitted, rogue scientists
will be enabled to pursue reproductive cloning.


Most researchers who support therapeutic cloning agree that legislation
should be passed to ban reproductive cloning. However, they argue that the
two types of cloning are vastly different and that therapeutic cloning
should be permitted.


South Korea, for its part, has passed a law that prohibits reproductive
cloning while providing funds for therapeutic stem-cell research.


"Our inspiration is to treat incurable diseases," Moon said Thursday at the
meeting in Seattle. "As scientists, we believe that this study is our
responsibility and moral obligation."


But it wasn't only government support that led Hwang and his colleagues to
success. It also took significant technical know-how. The lab already was
experienced in animal cloning, and researchers there honed those techniques
to get the best possible results.


"Based on our experience on cloning cows and pigs, we have focused on
optimizing the (protocol), and have been able to achieve a fairly high
efficiency," Moon said.


One apparently crucial difference between the South Korean effort and other
projects designed to clone human embryos was that instead of using a pipette
to suck the nucleus out of the egg, the Koreans broke a small hole in the
outer membrane of the egg and gently squeezed out the nucleus. That may have
kept intact some key proteins that control cell division.


The South Korean researchers also systematically tested three protocols for
developing embryos, then combined the best aspects of each in a fourth,
which led to the stem-cell line. They placed the eggs and embryos in
different versions of culture before finding the right recipe.


They also experimented with the amount of elapsed time between inserting
cells into the donor egg and infusing them with calcium. The calcium
activates the cells, inducing their development into an embryo.


Another key difference between past cloning attempts and the South Koreans'
research is that Hwang and his colleagues used cells from the same woman who
donated the egg to make the clone. They used cumulus cells, which are found
only in close proximity to female eggs, because those cells worked well in
previous cloning experiments in animals.


Taking cells from the egg donor also might be beneficial if stem cells are
one day used therapeutically. There's less of a chance those cells, when
injected into a patient, will be rejected.


The method has an immediate downside, however. Using cells from only one
person makes it more difficult for researchers to determine whether they've
actually cloned an embryo, or if the cells have spontaneously divided during
a process called parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis is a form of reproduction
in lower life forms, including flies, ants and lizards, but it doesn't
create embryos in humans.


In the South Korean experiment, the DNA from both the donor and the egg are
the same, which makes it hard to tell if they've got a new organism with two
sets of genes, or a parthenote.


Although tests showed the South Koreans probably created an embryo, MIT's
Jaenisch said that wasn't certain. But at the conference Thursday, the
Korean researchers said they were confident they had created human embryos.


"Our cell line was not derived from parthenogenetically activated
(embryos)," Yoon said, "but from SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer)," or
therapeutic cloning.




*********************************************************************



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