Human Being Cloned?

L O N D O N,   Dec. 16, 2001 -- Scientists who created Dolly thesheep, the world’s first cloned animal, said on Wednesday theydid not believe South Korean researchers had cloned a humanembryo.

“We don’t believe they have provided any evidence that theyhave achieved what they claimed to have achieved,” Dr HarryGriffin, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, said in atelephone interview. “The story is grossly overblown.”

Lee Bo-yon and researchers at Kyunghee University Hospitalin Seoul said on Wednesday that they had cultivated a humanembryo using an unfertilized egg and a somatic cell, those thatmake up most of the body, donated by a 30-year-old woman.

The Korean researchers said they aborted the experimentafter the human embryo divided into four cells.

“If implanted into a uterine wall of a carrier, we canassume that a human child would be formed and that it would havethe same gene characteristics as that of the donor,” Lee said.

Technically Possible Somatic cell transfer is the same technique the Roslinscientists used to create Dolly in 1996. Griffin said it wastechnically possible to clone a human embryo “but this group hasn’t done it.”

Humans start off as a single cell which then dividesrepeatedly, but it is only after three cell divisions that thenucleus takes over control of the development of the embryo.

“The Korean group stopped the experiment when they saw fourcells being produced so there is no evidence that the somaticcell they transferred was reprogrammed,” Griffin said.

He added that he and his colleagues were also puzzled aboutwhy Lee went ahead with the experiment now. They said there wasno indication that the Korean work was part of a large researchprogram and the South Korean government was consideringlegislation to control research on human cloning.

Not the First?

Griffin denied that Roslin scientists had already cloned ahuman embryo.

“There is no substance to the suggestion by Dr Lee Bo-yonthat the Roslin Institute has already cloned a human embryo. Wehave done no research on cloning with human cells. Such researchis currently illegal in the UK,” Griffin said in a statement.

Last week a panel of scientists advised Britain to allow thecloning of human embryos to create tissue and organs, but theysupported the government’s ban on human reproductive cloning.

If the recommendation is approved by the government,scientists will have to apply for a licence to do the research.

“In the UK an embryo would only be allowed to grow for 14days. At this stage it would be a small ball of cells barelyvisible to the naked eye. Implantation of the embryo in theuterus of a woman would not be allowed and neither is itnecessary for recovery of human embroynic stem cells,” Griffinsaid.

Scientists hope that stem cells, which have the potential tobe converted to specific cell types, could be used to treatpatients suffering from ailments such as Parkinson’s disease,stroke or heart attack. Griffin said it was extremely unlikelythat whole organs could ever be grown in the lab.

Dolly was produced by taking the nucleus out of a cell fromthe mammary gland of an adult animal and fusing it, using anelectrical current, into another sheep egg cell from which thenucleus had been transferred.

Since her creation scientists at the University of Hawaiihave cloned 50 mice from adult cells and Japanese researchershave produced up to eight calves from a single adult cow.