December 28, 2006
Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Guaranteed "Clone Free"
WASHINGTON - Meat and milk from cloned animals may not appear in supermarkets for years despite being deemed by the government as safe to eat. But don't be surprised if "clone-free" labels appear sooner. Ben & Jerry's, for one, wants consumers to know that its ice cream comes from regular cows and not clones. The Ben & Jerry's label already says its farmers don't use bovine growth hormone."We want to make sure people are confident with what's in our pints," company spokesman Rob Michalak said. "We haven't yet landed on exactly how we want to express that publicly."
For food that does come from clones, the
Food and Drug Administration is unlikely to require labels, officials said.The FDA gave preliminary approval Thursday to meat and milk from cloned animals or their offspring. Federal scientists found virtually no difference between food from clones and food from conventional livestock.
(via yahoo news)
Posted by Groonk at 03:46 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Culture
August 03, 2005
First Dog Clone
One of the puppies died soon after birth but the other, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, is still doing well after 16 weeks, the researchers say.
Snuppy joins a host of other cloned animals including Dolly the sheep, CC the cat and Ralph the rat.
Scientists hope dog clones will help them understand and treat a range of serious human diseases.
(via bbcnews)
Posted by Groonk at 09:10 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
April 14, 2005
Of Course, Of Course
More fromthe cloning sector:
The birth of the world's second horse clone has been announced by scientists.The foal is a copy of a world endurance champion, Pieraz, an animal that has been castrated and was therefore incapable of normal reproduction.
The research was undertaken by genetic engineering labs Cryozootech of Evry, France, and LTR-CIZ of Cremona, Italy, where the foal is being kept.
[...]
This is not such a great restriction in flat racing because the champion horses of the turf are rarely castrated; the best stallions and mares will be sent to stud at the end of their careers to breed the next generation of top horses.
But the proponents of cloning say the copying technology could be useful in those sports frequented by animals that are often gelded at a young age and have no ability to reproduce normally.
(via bbcnews)
Posted by Groonk at 11:28 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
March 28, 2005
T. Rex DNA
And now... comes the part... where we clone the shit out of those fuckers!
Palaeontologists have extracted soft, flexible structures that appear to be blood vessels from the bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex that died 68 million years ago. They also have found small red microstructures that resemble red blood cells.The discovery suggests biological information can be recovered from a wider range of fossil material than realised, which would greatly help the tracing of evolutionary relationships.
The preservation found by the researchers is extraordinary - far better than traditionally expected in dinosaur bone. But that may be because researchers have not been looking hard enough at their finds. Mary Schweitzer at North Carolina State University, US, has also extracted similar soft structures from a few other dinosaur bones.
The leg bone came from a skeleton called B-rex found in a remote canyon in South Dakota, in 2000 by a member of Jack Horner's research team at the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. The 107-centimetre-long femur - small for a T. rex - was intact when found, and its hollow interior had not been filled with minerals. That is unusual for a long-buried bone.
(via wirednews and new scientist)
Posted by Groonk at 09:56 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Cloning, Science
February 08, 2005
Dolly Scientist gets Human Cloning ok
If people understood how freaking far we are from growing full grown humans in a la your favorite sci-fi literature, would they be as bent out of shape?
LONDON (AP) - The British government Tuesday gave the creator of Dolly the Sheep a license to clone human embryos for medical research into the cause of motor neuron disease.[...]
While the latest project would not use the stem cells to correct the disease, the study of the cells is expected to help scientists develop future treatments, according to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which regulates such research and approved the license.
Stem cells are the master cells of the body. They appear when embryos are just a few days old and go on to develop into every type of cell and tissue in the body. Scientists hope to be able to extract the stem cells from embryos when they are in their blank state and direct them to form any desired cell type to treat a variety of diseases, ranging from Parkinson's to diabetes.
Getting the cells from an embryo that is cloned from a sick patient could allow scientists to track how diseases develop and provide genetically matched cell transplants that do not cause the immune systems to reject the transplant.
Such work, called therapeutic cloning because it does not result in a baby, is opposed by abortion foes and other biological conservatives because researchers must destroy human embryos to harvest the cells.
(via 7d)
Posted by Groonk at 04:24 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
September 08, 2004
Genetic Savings & Clone
My research into cloning continues.
Kittens Tabouli and Baba Ganoush aren't twins, they're clones, the products of a pet-cloning laboratory. CEO Lou Hawthorne says there's a fortune to be made copying cats."It's a multibillion-dollar business waiting to happen," Hawthorne said.
Hawthorne's company, Genetic Savings & Clone, claims it has a waiting list of those ready to pay $50,000 to clone a beloved cat. Dogs will cost more...
The front page to the Savings and Clone site has a totally farked image.
link via 7d
Posted by Groonk at 08:58 PM | Comments (1) | Ministry of Cloning
August 31, 2004
Cloning the dead
A fertility scientist at the Kentucky Center for Reproductive Medicine, Panayiotis Zavos, claims to have taken cells from dead humans and cloned them. He stopped short of implanting the embryos, but the scientific community is in an uproar.
In the latest work, Zavos claims to have taken live cells from the tissues of three dead people, injected them into cow eggs stripped of their nuclei and then fused them using electrical stimulation.[...]
Zavos used blood and other tissues from an 11-year-old girl who was killed in a car crash. Her parents kept the tissues in their home refrigerator until they were delivered in dry ice to Zavos’ group three days later.
Cells were also used from a dead 18-month-old boy, but the embryos produced survived until the four-cell stage only, Zavos says, and so were not viable.
The third case was that of a 33-year-old man. His tissues were harvested in the mortuary immediately after death, so the team was able to culture them “just like fresh cells”. These cells produced embryos which grew to the 64-cell stage - “definitely transferable embryos which can yield a viable pregnancy", says Zavos.
I don't know about you but the people who kept their daughter's body tissue in the fridge after her death creep me out more.
Posted by Groonk at 08:08 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
June 22, 2004
UK considers human cloning request
A team at Newcastle University said Wednesday they had asked the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority for a license to create embryos from which stem cells would be harvested for medical research.[...]
If permission is granted, scientists may create cloned embryos only for purposes of extracting stem cells for medical research. The extraction, which is done when the embryo is a few days old, means the clones cannot develop into babies. The embryos are only allowed to be developed until they are 14 days old.
Posted by Groonk at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
May 25, 2004
Now that's forethought
via dph
A woman has given birth to a baby boy who was conceived using 21-year-old sperm, it has emerged.Doctors at St Mary's Hospital in Manchester, where the baby was born two years ago, said the age of the sperm might make it a world record.
The boy's father had his sperm frozen when he was 17 before undergoing treatment for testicular cancer, which made him infertile.
Doctors said the case showed that freezing sperm was safe and worthwhile.
Posted by Groonk at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Science
April 14, 2004
The Godsend Institute
The Godsend Institute appears to be the first bona fide human reproductive cloning institute, according to its website.The institute has no qualms about its true goal. Its scientists aren't trying to cure the world's ills; they want to "create life from life." The center's visionary and founder is Dr. Richard Wells, one of the top fertility experts in the world.
The website is seductively professional-looking. It features bird's-eye photographs of a sprawling facility, state-of-the-art equipment and smiling families once touched by tragedy, now embracing their cloned-back-to-life children. It sounds too amazing to be true, and, of course, it is. Dr. Richard Wells also happens to be the name of the fertility doctor played by Robert De Niro in Lions Gate's upcoming sci-fi film, Godsend.
The website bears no mention of the movie, but a WhoIs search shows that Lions Gate owns the domain name. Also, the fact that Jeremy Walker, the publicist who instigated the Blair Witch Project Web chatter, is doing Godsend's publicity is a strong indication that the two are connected. Walker and representatives from Lions Gate did not return phone calls requesting clarification on who exactly developed the site and what they hoped to accomplish.
Clever bit of marketing. Nice to see the someone from Blair Witch can still do good stuff.
Grab a look at the trailer.
Posted by Groonk at 05:22 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
February 12, 2004
S. Koreans advance in stem cell research
By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News
For the first time, scientists have cloned a human embryo and grown it to a stage where its stem cells could be harvested for transplants, an important medical advance that raises political and ethical questions.
The research, reported by South Korean scientists in today's issue of the journal Science, could lead to cures for Parkinson's disease and juvenile diabetes. But it also raises the specter of producing life only to destroy it for medical purposes -- and brings science one step closer to creating a cloned baby.
``If it can be replicated elsewhere, it means that we've taken a big step toward creating cells that match the DNA of a person who needs cell therapy, avoiding rejection problems,'' said law Professor Hank Greely of Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Ethics.
``The other side,'' added Greely, ``is this: It might be possible to make a baby this way.''
Posted by Groonk at 01:58 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
October 31, 2003
Clone burger?
Although preliminary, the FDA's findings are causing consternation for some consumer advocates.
The FDA hasn't yet completed writing the 300-page scientific review on which the summary is based, even though the agency is asking its scientific advisers to critique the risk assessment next week. How, critics wonder, can anyone be confident of the FDA's review of such an important matter on the basis of 11 pages of vague information?
In addition, the FDA hasn't yet considered the societal reaction to using cloned animals for food, something the National Research Council specifically urged addressing, said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America...
...Consumer reaction could prove key to whether food producers want to invest in cloning technology or not. Foods that are genetically modified face trade barriers overseas despite FDA assurances that those now sold are safe. While cloning means a genetic copy, not genetic modification, public understanding of biotechnology is sketchy.
Posted by Groonk at 03:34 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
August 06, 2003
First cloned horse unveiled in Italy
The foal, called Prometea, was born 10 weeks ago and appears to be perfectly healthy.
To create Prometea, scientists took a skin cell from an adult mare which was fused with an empty equine egg.
The mare then acted as a surrogate mother for Prometea - so giving birth to a carbon copy of herself.
The development is reported in the journal Nature. It means that scientists have now cloned sheep, mice, cattle, goats, rabbits, cats, pigs and mules. The mule, called Idaho Gem, was born earlier this year in the US.
Posted by Groonk at 03:23 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
June 20, 2003
Banned "designer baby" is born in UK
Baby James Whitaker was born in Sheffield on Monday, and is 98 per cent likely to provide a tissue-match for his seriously ill brother Charlie.
Parents Michelle and Jayson Whitaker travelled to the US in 2002 to conceive a baby with the same immune system genes as four-year-old Charlie, who suffers from a rare disorder called Diamond Blackfan anaemia.
The Whitakers were refused permission to create a matched baby by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in August 2002. The procedure would be "unlawful and unethical", said the HFEA, because it involved some risk to the embryo but the only benefit would be to Charlie.
Tissue-typing of embryos is only permitted in the UK if it is used in combination with screening for a serious genetic disease that poses a risk to the embryo. This was the case with Raj and Shahana Hashmi, who were allowed to create a sibling for their son Zain, who suffers from the genetic blood disorder beta-thalassaemia.
"The difference between the Whitakers' case and the Hashmis' is that the Hashmi parents were carriers of the disease and any embryo created would have had a one in four risk of having the disease," says HFEA spokeswoman Vishnee Seenundun.
"In the case of the Whitakers, the disease in the child is classified as a sporadic mutation - the parents did not have any disease or traits to pass on to the child," she told New Scientist.
Testing time
Sufferers of Diamond Blackfan anaemia produce too few red blood cells and usually die before the age of 30. Currently, Charlie gets regular blood transfusions and injections five nights a week, but only a transplant of perfectly matched stem cells will save him.
Stem cells have been collected from James' umbilical cord and tests will reveal whether the tissue is a perfect match in a few days. However, it is possible that James may also suffer from the rare anaemia. It will take several months of tests to determine this.
Mrs Whitaker was treated at the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago in October 2002, where the world's first "designer baby" was created in 2000. James is the second selected baby to be born in the UK
The British Medical Association backed the Whitakers' success. "As doctors we believe that where technology exists that could help a dying or seriously ill child without involving major risks for others, then it can only be right that it is used for this purpose," says Vivienne Nathanson, head of BMA ethics and science.
The continuing fierce debate about "designer babies" may influence the HFEA's future policies, admits Seenundun: "All our policies are constantly reviewed and we do take into account public opinion."
Repeat miscarriages
Another major milestone in embryo screening in the UK was announced on Tuesday, with the first pregnancy of a woman using the technique to reduce the risk of having a Down's Syndrome baby. "Aneuploidy screening" was licensed in the UK by the HFEA in November 2002.
The technique screens for the chromosome abnormalities that afflict embryos produced by many older women who have suffered repeat miscarriages.
A 42-year-old woman who suffered miscarriages and infertility for six years is now 10 weeks pregnant said her doctors at the CARE clinic in Nottingham.
Shaoni Bhattacharya
Posted by Groonk at 09:28 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Science
June 10, 2003
First To Clone Equine
The research team includes Gordon Woods, UI professor of animal and veterinary science, Kenneth L. White, Utah State University professor of animal science, and Dirk Vanderwall, UI assistant professor of animal and veterinary science.
The baby mule, Idaho Gem, was born May 4. It is the first clone of a hybrid animal. A mule results from a cross between a female horse, a mare, and a male donkey, a jack. As hybrids, mules are sterile, except in extremely rare cases.
Veterinary examinations of the foal and its surrogate mother showed them to be in good health, Woods said. The foal romped with its surrogate mother during a news conference on the UI campus this morning to announce its birth.
The foal's DNA comes from a fetal cell culture first established in 1998 at the University of Idaho.
As scientifically and commercially significant as their accomplishment is for the horse industry, Woods said he is most excited because the project provides a new animal model, the horse, to advance understanding of human cancer.
Woods believes the breakthrough understanding of cellular biology necessary for horse cloning to proceed may offer new insights into cancer development in humans.
Woods, UI professor of animal and veterinary science, began working on the cloning project in 1998. As director of the Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory on the UI Moscow campus, he has spent much of his career studying horse-breeding issues.
Horses present a large challenge to those who would use advanced technology to assist them. Only two "test-tube" horse foals, babies conceived in a test tube, have resulted from in vitro fertilization experiments worldwide.
The mule clone born in May is the full sibling of a champion racing mule owned by Idaho businessman, UI benefactor and mule enthusiast Don Jacklin of Post Falls.
For three years, from 1998 to 2000, the team worked without apparent success. After transferring the nuclei from the mule cells into 134 horse eggs and implanting them into mares, two apparently "false pregnancies" resulted, but both failed to proceed past four weeks.
In 2001, the team began to focus on the calcium levels in the fluid surrounding the eggs during the cloning procedure. The change led to the first fetal heart beat, signifying the team had crossed a significant hurdle in the experiment. That year, researchers transferred 84 eggs, establishing five apparent pregnancies.
"The results were impressive and immediate," Woods said. The first change led to a significant advance in the development of cloned embryos.
In 2002, Woods, White and Vanderwall continued to adjust the calcium levels in the fluid surrounding the egg during the cloning procedure. That change dramatically increased the team's success.
The team established 14 pregnancies using mule DNA in 113 attempts. Eight of the pregnancies continued to at least the 40-day stage when heartbeats were detected.
To test whether mule DNA could be limiting success, the team also made 61 attempts to use horse DNA. The test resulted in seven apparent pregnancies, two of which developed heartbeats. Neither of the horse clone pregnancies developed past the critical 60-day threshold, however.
The UI-Utah State team is the first to succeed among several teams worldwide attempting to clone a member of the horse family. The 2002 preliminary testing showed the method developed by the researchers to successfully clone a mule should work equally as well with a horse, Woods said.
"It basically came down to a matter of numbers, and we wanted to focus most of our attention on cloning a mule, which was our original objective," Vanderwall said.
White is widely recognized as an expert on cattle cloning and brought cloning expertise to the team. Vanderwall, who like Woods, earned doctor of veterinary medicine and Ph.D. degrees, brought extensive clinical expertise to the team.
Woods had taken an interest in basic horse physiology after becoming intrigued by the observation that stallions, male horses, do not develop prostate cancer.
The horse's basic metabolism is "slow" compared to humans and many other mammals, Woods said. He speculated that difference in cellular activity might play a role in both cancer development and reproduction.
He formed an outside company, Cancer2, to investigate that observation with the backing of private investors. The studies showed a fundamental difference between men and stallions in the calcium concentrations within the cells and surrounding fluid. Woods said the team will explore other lines of scientific inquiry opened by this year's success.
Posted by Groonk at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning
April 24, 2003
Genetically enhanced humans to come
50 years until, KHAAAAAAAAAAANN!
DNA pioneers brought together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the molecule's structure believe humans will begin to genetically enhance themselves - and their unborn children - in the next 50 years.
Or a Doctor Bashir.
Posted by Groonk at 06:49 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Science, Technology, World
April 23, 2003
Wunderkind
Color me jealous:
(AP) He was solving math problems at 14 months, reading and correcting adults' grammar by 2 — the same age he decided to become a vegetarian. He was explaining photosynthesis to kindergarten classmates at 5.He breezed through 10 grades of school in three years, graduated with honors from high school at 9, founded an international youth advocacy organization, met with prime ministers and presidents, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Twice.
Now, 13-year-old Gregory Robert Smith is about to add another line to his resume: College graduate.
Greg will receive his bachelor's degree in mathematics May 31 from Randolph-Macon College, a private Methodist school 15 miles north of Richmond. Greg, who was elected Phi Beta Kappa, is graduating cum laude.
He has not yet said where he will attend graduate school. He plans to earn PhDs in math, aerospace engineering, political science and biomedical engineering, and pursue multiple careers while continuing to champion nonviolence and children's rights.
Among his goals is to become president of the United States.
“It would give me the opportunity to help so many people,” Greg said in an interview in the campus office where Janet Smith spends her days managing her son's always-packed daily schedule.
Greg's arrival at Randolph-Macon in September 1999 drew so much attention that he had to schedule two news conferences — one before classes and one at the end of the day. School officials expect a similar crush on graduation day.
Since that first day of college, Greg has shot up 13 inches — “5 feet 7,” he says proudly — but his maturity and personal growth are much harder to quantify, said his mentor, psychology professor Michael Wessells.
“I don't have a measuring stick for it,” Wessells said. “He has come much farther in three years than anyone I've ever known.”
Greg already was well ahead of his classmates intellectually when he arrived, Wessells said. But the cheerful lad with the distinctive bowl-shaped mop of golden hair lacked life experience and cultural understanding.
That is where he has made the greatest strides, Wessells said.
“He has boundless curiosity, a tremendous sense of values around peace and social justice, and great motivation. His is a mind that should not be straitjacketed.”
Greg could have entered a larger and more well-known college. But Janet and Bob Smith liked the small classes at the 1,100-student school and what seemed a safe environment for their son, who received his first threatening note — likely from a jealous classmate — when he was 8. An adult is always by his side, often a campus security officer.
Janet Smith said concerns that her son has missed out on his childhood are misplaced. Greg has charted a course that makes him happy, and that includes not only advanced learning but also playing sports with children his own age.
“I feel I've lived the life of a normal child,” Greg said. “I've just been given so many incredible opportunities.”
Among those opportunities was attending Randolph-Macon on full scholarship. However, much of his energy has been spent working with the Richmond-based Christian Children's Fund and traveling as the founder of International Youth Advocates, which champions nonviolence and human rights.
He visited Kenya, where he was a guest at the signing of a peace treaty between warring tribes, and witnessed the despair of crack-addicted children in the slums of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He has met with Mikhail Gorbachev, Jordan's Queen Noor and Nobel peace laureates.
“He's traveling in circles very few humans ever attain, let alone 13-year-olds,” Wessells said.
Greg earns money on the speaking circuit to support his philanthropic work. He writes his own speeches, which he delivers with the polish of a veteran campaigner.
“When I was very young,” Greg says in one videotaped speech, drawing laughter from the crowd of about 11,000. He waits for silence and begins again: “When I was very young and witnessed the video accounts of children suffering from disease or malnutrition, separated from their families or subjected to violence, I knew I had to act. I was just 7 years old then, but I was certain that there must be a way that I could make a difference.”
Greg continues to advocate for children and peace, which he said go hand-in-hand.
“The first step to peace is education. That's one reason I'm working so hard,” Greg said.
Greg's lessons outside the classroom included what Wessells called “an encounter with the school of hard knocks” at the United Nations' first children's summit last May. He was a delegate to the fractious meeting, which ended with approval of a compromise children's rights document that pleased virtually no one. “I saw firsthand how countries that didn't want to deal with these issues sabotaged the document,” he said.
“He was quite upset by the level of political rhetoric and all the self-serving positions that were taken,” Wessells said. “It was a bitter pill for him, but that's part of growing up. He didn't lose his idealism, but tempered it with a better sense of reality.”
Posted by Groonk at 02:52 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, USA
April 16, 2003
Dolly on display
An old article but my cloning research continues:
LONDON (AP) - The preserved body of Dolly the sheep, who gained worldwide fame as the world's first mammal cloned from an adult, went on display Wednesday at a Scottish museum.Dolly, whose birth in 1996 was heralded as a scientific landmark but triggered heated debate about the ethics of cloning, was put to death Feb. 14 after a veterinarian confirmed she had a fatal lung disease. She was 6.
Her creators at the Roslin Institute in Scotland said there was no evidence that cloning was a factor in Dolly contracting the disease, Sheep Pulmonary Adenomatosis, a virus-induced lung tumor that commonly affects sheep of her age.
The institute donated Dolly's remains to the National Museums of Scotland, where her skin was pickled and tanned to preserve it before being stretched over a fiberglass mold of her body and mounted on a straw-covered plinth.
Ian Wilmut, who led the team which cloned Dolly, said Wednesday that his pride at seeing her on display at Edinburgh's Royal Museum was tinged with sadness at her death from the lung tumor.
"It's not so many weeks ago since she was alive and in the barn, but we're very proud that's she in here," he said. "She will go on reminding people of the fact that scientific progress was made in Edinburgh which is making people think very differently about this aspect of biology."
Dolly's birth created an international sensation because although researchers had previously cloned sheep from fetal and embryonic cells, it was unknown whether an adult cell could reprogram itself to develop into a new being. Her arrival heightened concerns that human cloning was around the corner.
She was created by clearing the genetic material out of an egg and replacing it with that of a cell taken from the breast of an adult ewe. The reconstructed egg was then submerged in chemicals and zapped with electricity to stimulate it to divide and become an embryo. The embryo which was to become Dolly was then implanted into the womb of a sheep.
Posted by Groonk at 09:38 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Science
April 14, 2003
Japan Closer to Bringing Cloned Meat to Market
Japan's Health Ministry said in a report obtained by Reuters on Friday that no abnormalities had been found in meat or milk derived from cloning technology
But the report, based on a three-year study, also called for the creation of a system to deal with any problems that might crop up in the future.
"Because it is a new technology, we conclude that special considerations should be taken," the report said.
Sales of food made from cloned animals are currently prohibited under a "voluntary" ban urged by the Farm Ministry.
But according to a Kyodo news agency survey conducted in December, 33 of the 40 facilities in Japan that raise cloned cattle are planning or considering shipments in future.
Officials declined to say whether the report would herald a sea change in a country known for its fussy consumers and tight restrictions on foods derived from biotechnology.
"At the moment, we have no plans to allow the distribution of meat or milk from cloned cows in the domestic market," an official at the ministry's inspection and safety division said.
The Health Ministry's report, which echoes similar findings made in June 2000 and last August, refers to cows produced using the cloning technique that created Britain's Dolly the sheep in 1996.
Animals are cloned by taking the nuclei of cells from adults and fusing them, using an electrical current, into other egg cells from which the nuclei have been extracted.
Posted by Groonk at 08:20 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Science, World
Final human genome sequence released
Much publicity was given to the announcements of the draft human genome, and then its formal publication, but the final version will be officially launched on Monday in Washington DC.
"What we've got now is what we'll have for all eternity," says Francis Collins, director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute and the head of the consortium of 16 international institutions that collaborated to sequence the code.
Posted by Groonk at 08:15 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Science
April 11, 2003
Human cloning currently 'almost impossible'
A newly discovered quirk of primate cell biology suggests that monkeys - and humans - are nearly impossible to clone with current techniques."There's a molecular obstacle that stops the technology from working in primates," says Gerald Schatten, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania. "Charlatans who claim they have cloned humans clearly don't understand the biology."
Unlike other mammal species in which adult animals have been successfully cloned, Schatten's team found that the eggs of rhesus monkeys are robbed of a key set of proteins during the cloning procedure. The same appears to be true for human cells.
That loss causes genetic chaos in cloned monkey embryos, with chromosomes distributed almost at random. As a result, the embryos look fine at an early stage, but are completely incapable of further development. The finding severely undermines claims by Clonaid, a company started by a UFO cult, to have created several cloned babies.
"It's an interesting part of the puzzle of why primates have been so difficult to clone," says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts-based biotech company that has cloned human embryos.
"Gallery of horrors"
Schatten's group want to clone monkeys to assist in the study of human diseases. The key technology is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), where a cell from the adult animal to be cloned is fused with an egg stripped of its own nuclear DNA.
Other researchers had cloned sheep, cows, mice, goats, pigs, rabbits and a cat, so Schatten was confident monkeys could be cloned too. But despite producing perfect-looking monkey embryos using SCNT, none developed further.
New Scientist reported concerns about cloned monkey embryos in December 2001, when one of Schatten's colleagues described them as a "gallery of horrors".
The new study of 716 rhesus monkey embryos revealed the same chromosomal chaos. Some of the embryo's cells contained double the normal number of chromosomes, others had odd combinations and some had none at all. And Schatten's team have now discovered why.
Lost direction
On a hunch they examined the cells' spindles, structures that guide chromosomes into daughter cells as the embryo divides. The researchers found that SCNT primate embryos lacked at least two proteins required for proper spindle function, leaving the chromosomes to distribute randomly throughout the embryo.
These proteins turn out to be tightly linked to the chromosomes in the monkey's eggs, which are removed in one of the first steps of the nuclear transfer process. Further, unpublished work by Schatten's group and others has shown the same is true for human cells.
In contrast, mice and cows have extra copies of these proteins floating around to help out the cloned embryo. Schatten jokes: "It's almost like God in her wisdom said go ahead and clone cows and sheep, but if you clone a human I'm going to paralyse the egg."
Embryonic cells
The discovery is important, says Lanza, but there may be other important factors. Although attempts to clone a monkey by SCNT using adult cells have all failed, two animals were cloned by embryonic cell nuclear transfer, which Schatten reports also creates the damaging spindle defect.
Furthermore, even trivial differences, such as a slight changes to reagents, can turn success into failure when cloning other species, says Lanza.
Schatten intends to test his spindle idea by using a different cloning technique. He will allow the egg's chromosomes to remain in the embryo until after the donor cell has been fused, so the spindle proteins can migrate to new locations. He already has preliminary evidence that proper spindles then form, suggesting primate cloning could perhaps be feasible.
But he warns against any attempt at human cloning, given the high rate of abortions, neonatal deaths and health problems that in clones. "I hope this natural obstacle affords us time to make responsible and enforceable legislation to prevent anyone attempting human reproductive cloning," he says.
Journal reference: Science (vol 300, p 297)
Philip Cohen
Posted by Groonk at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, Science
April 09, 2003
Designer babies a go
Damn interesting.
Four-year-old Zain Hashmi has the rare blood disorder thalassaemia and requires a bone marrow transplant.
He can be treated with blood transfusions but, over time, the amount of iron in the body can build to dangerous levels.
His parents, Raj and Shahana, want doctors to use pioneering IVF technology to screen embryos to find one that will provide a perfect match for him.
Shahana Hashmi said the family was "absolutely thrilled" with the court's decision.
She added: "We have said all along that at the centre of this case was our son, a little boy who suffers greatly.
"We are also delighted because this case opens the door to other families who are suffering.
"Whether or not we succeed, this decision has given Zain and us new hope.
"We feel that we should never have had to go through this, but it has made us all stronger and shows that justice can be done."
'No floodgate'
The Appeal Court decision overturns a High Court ruling in December last year which said the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) did not have the power to license the technique under existing legislation.
It followed a challenge by Josephine Quintavalle, of the public interest group Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Core).
The ruling will allow other families in a similar situation to the Hashmis apply to be able to use the tissue-typing technique.
But the HFEA said strict regulations were in place and the decision would not open the floodgates for babies "designed" for social reasons, such as eye colour.
Suzi Leather, chair of the HFEA, said: "We are pleased that the Court of Appeal has upheld our decision.
"This means that the Hashmi family can continue with their treatment.
"Clearly clinicians cannot always prevent diseases but if they are able to and also save the life of a sibling, then this is a legitimate use of these new techniques."
The British Medical Association also backed the Appeal Court's decision.
'Case by case'
Dr Simon Fishel, of Nottingham's Centres for Assisted Reproduction, who is treating the family, said: "I am absolutely delighted for the Hashmis in particular and all our other patients who wish to remain in the UK for their treatment.
"I am relieved that this judgement, once and for all, supports the HFEA as the proper regulatory body for licensing these technologies."
He added: "From the public's point of view they should have no fear because cases such as the Hashmis and the procedures involved will remain highly regulated by the HFEA and strict conditions will apply to all couples seeking this treatment on a case by case basis."
Josephine Quintavalle, spokeswoman for Core, said: "We extend yet again our well wishes to the Hashmi family, against whom we took no legal action whatsoever."
But she added: "There are serious issues at stake here and from that perspective it is a defeat for society at large and certainly an overwhelming defeat for Parliamentary democracy."
The Hashmis have sought a bone marrow donor for their son, but no genetic match has so far been found.
Posted by Groonk at 02:09 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Cloning, History, Science, World
