Cloning

“Clone” derives from the Greek word for “twig”

The very word “cloning” makes some people hysterical. And the scientific implications are complex and confusing.ⁱ… The issues of cloning and stem-cell researchⁱⁱ (photos) are not identical, although they are linked in the minds of those whose religion teaches that life begins at conception rather than later when the fetus “quickens,” as people in some other religions believe.… The definition of “life” depends on whether one believes an embryo is in itself a living human or a collection of cells with human potential if implanted in a woman’s uterus.¹ “It is essential to distinguish a human being from human cells. They are very different beasts,” said Bert Vogelstein, a cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins University and the chairman of a major ethical review board.² Advocates for patients, as well as the biotechnology industry, are strongly in support of therapeutic cloning.³
[The history of cloning dates back more than a century to 1891 Naples when Hans Driesch (see also Adolph Eduard Driesch), in a controversial experiment, separated the blastomeres of a cleaving sea urchin egg.]⁴ He picked [sea urchins] because they have large embryo cells, and grow independently of their mothers. Dreich took a 2 celled embryo of a sea urchin and shook it in a beaker full of sea water until the two cells separated. Each grew independently, and formed a separate, whole sea urchin.
In 1902, another scientist, embryologist Hans Spemman [or Spemann] (pic), used a hair from his infant son as a knife to separate a 2-celled embryo of a salamander, which also grow externally. He later separated a single cell from a 16-celled embryo. In these experiments, both the large and the small embryos developed into identical adult salamanders.⁵ Spemann called it twinning.⁶ If the constriction is not complete and produces only a dumbbell, one may obtain an embryo with a single tail and two complete heads.⁷ Spemman went on to propose what he called a “fantastical experiment” — to remove the genetic material from an adult cell, and use it to grow another adult. In this way, he theorized, he would be able to prove that no genetic material was lost as cells grew and divided.⁸
Also, in the same period as the Spemann work, [Jacques Loeb in 1899 and Gregory Pincus, inventor of the birth control pill, in 1936 ⁹] were experimenting with another radical reproductive technique, [artificial] parthenogenesis. This is the manipulative method of shocking the female into pregnancy by using x-rays, chemicals or other “inducers.” ^iii, iv Loeb made some “monsters” this way, whose photographs were carried in U.S. newspapers. Pincus’ rabbit, allegedly also produced by parthenogenesis, regaled the cover of Look magazine in 1937.¹⁰
There were no major advances in cloning until November of 1951, when a team of scientists in Philadelphia working at the lab of Robert Briggs cloned a frog embryo. This team did not simply break off a cell from an embryo, however. They took the nucleus out of a frog embryo cell and used it to replace the nucleus of an unfertilized frog egg cell.… Once the egg cell detected that it had a full set of chromosomes, it began to divide and grow.¹¹
[In 1966,] J.B. Gurdon, a cell biologist at Oxford University in England,…spent a lot of time experimenting to achieve…normal cloned frogs [allegedly from adult cells]. Altogether, 707 attempts produced 11 clones.¹² The frogs did not develop beyond tadpoles however.…
In 1984, Dr. Steene Willadsen announced that he had successfully transferred nuclei from embryos of sheep to produce clones. He also was successful with cows and even monkeys. He advanced his methods, and began cloning embryos that were in the 64-128 stage. This suggested that perhaps nuclear transfer was possible with differentiated cells. More exciting was when Dr. Neal First…produced cows by nuclear transfer from more developed embryos in 1994. Dr. First produced four calves. Two years later, Dr. Ian Wilmut and Dr. Keith Campbell, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, produced for the world Megan and Morag, cloned sheep from embryo cells.¹³
[By 1988, cloning technologies in use included embryo splitting, embryo transfer, nuclear transfer, gene transfer, and chimera production.]¹⁴
[In October of 1993, scientists at George Washington University in Washington, DC, announced that they had cloned human embryos. Seventeen human embryos produced forty-eight clones. They] could have been implanted in women to carry, but were not because they were cloned from defective cells.¹⁵ [It was] apparently the first report of such a feat. The experiment, while not a technical breakthrough since the scientist used methods that [were] commonly used to clone animal embryos, opens a range of practical and ethical questions.¹⁶

The young lamb named Dolly (left) with her surrogate mother

[When the Roslin Institute announced on 7 March 1996 that it had cloned another sheep, there was little press.] The results of the cloning research [was] embargoed by the journal Nature until [19 Feb 1997].^17, v [Suddenly somatic cell nuclear transfer became newsworthy. Most reports list incorrect dates of the institute’s announcement and fail to mention earlier cloning experiments.] [Dolly the cloned sheep was heralded as the first of her kind: the first cloned mammal created from an adult cell.^vi But the techniques used had been available for some time. The process of starving an adult cell so that it acquiesces into an undifferentiated cell was already known to science. (Cells are usually kept in a culture of 10 percent fetal calf serum. When this level is reduced to 0.5 percent — a standard technique to put cells to sleep — inactive genes in the adult cells are restored to their undifferentiated state.)]¹⁸
In an advance that takes cloning out of the barnyard and into the living room, researchers announced [14 Feb 2002] they had cloned a cat (more photos).… “We are intending to commercialize pet cloning as soon as we are able to do it consistently, safely^vii and successfully,” said Ben Carlson, a spokesman for Genetic Savings & Clone,¹⁹ [which has since closed its doors].
“A lot of people want to clone pets. A lot of people. Especially if the price is right,” says [cloning expert Mark] Westhusin.²⁰ Five customers have already parted with $50,000 each for a copy of their cats.²¹ [The first commercially cloned feline, “Little Nicky” (pic), was cloned from a seventeen-year-old male Maine Coon cat named “Nicky.” August 3, 2005, brought the announcement of a cloned dog named Snuppy — for "Seoul National University puppy." The hospital announced August 5, 2008, five commercially cloned male puppies born from a beloved rescued pitbull "Booger" for $50,000 and the keeper's house (AP photo).]
[Since the birth of Dolly, a dozen other mammal species have been cloned, including mouse, cattle,^viii pigs, goat, rabbit, rat, horse, mule,^ix African wildcat, Bengal cat, banteng, white-tailed deer, Siberian ibex, gazelle, water buffalo, and primates in November 2007.^x (more pics)
In 2005, British scientists created cloned human embryos from embryonic stem cells. In January 2008, scientists in California created cloned embryos from their own skin cells.]
As if there weren’t enough of them in the world already, scientists have succeeded in cloning flies. The identical fruitflies are the first insects ever cloned, says the Canadian team that created them.… They sucked several nuclei out of developing fly embryos, and injected them into a fertilized fly egg. From over 800 initial attempts, they conjured five adult insects, the group reports in the journal Genetics [Haigh A. J., Macdonald W. A. & Lloyd V. K. Genetics, published online 10.1534/genetics.104.035113 (2004)].²²

Japanese scientists plan to clone the extinct wooly mammoth and display it at an Ice Age wildlife park in Siberia, but they have yet to procure suitable DNA. For April Fool’s Day 2004, Australia’s Daily Telegraph announced that the extinct Tasmanian tiger had been cloned.

[Within two weeks of the 1997 announcement of Dolly, a UFO cult claimed that they would clone people for a price.]²³ [In August of 2001,] Brigitte Boisselier (pic), a biochemist and director of Clonaid (news), an arm of the Raelian Movement,^xi…hinted that such experiments were already under way. When asked for details, she only smiled and said: “I am doing it and hope I can publish that soon and share it with you.” ²⁴ “I am very, very pleased to announce that the first baby clone was born,” said Dr. Boisselier.… “She was born [26 Dec 2002] at 11:55 a.m.,” at an undisclosed overseas location.²⁵ The world’s second cloned baby was born on [3 Jan 2003] to a Dutch woman, the head of the Raelian sect in the Netherlands said on [4 Jan 2003]. “A baby girl was born.… The baby is healthy and the mother, too,” Bart Overvliet told Reuters by telephone.^26, xii
[Severino Antinori (pic, news), an Italian fertility specialist,] said he intended to create the world’s first human clone [telling] a televistion show [23 April 2002] three women were pregnant with cloned embryos.… He said two of the pregnancies were developing in Russia and one in an “Islamic state” and that they were six to nine weeks along. ^27, xiii He added that in China eight embryos have been created but not yet implanted. The controversial gynecologist did not provide evidence for his claims, but remarked that in such cases the word cloning is inappropriate. “It is a genetic re-programming. The baby has 85% of the father’s genes and 15% of the mother’s,…” he said.²⁸
A doctor who is trying to clone babies for several couples as part of a controversial experiment said cloning isn’t such a “monstrous” procedure, but he acknowledged that risks do exist. (pic, news) appeared on CNN’s “Connie Chung Tonight” [12 Aug 2002] with an American couple who will be the first to take part in the cloning. Six or seven couples hope to have a baby [in 2003] as part of the experiment. “The public will realize that this is not as monstrous as...it may sound. Once they see a baby dressed in pink or blue, they will say, ‘What a wonderful thing,’” said Zavos.^29, xiv
[Claims of cloned babies have yet to be substantiated, primarily because of the risk of incarceration.]

The furore over “designer babies” ^xv has re-ignited in the UK with the birth of a tissue-matched baby to a couple banned from using the technique by UK authorities.³⁰ [The baby’s parents] were denied permission to undergo the procedure known as tissue typing in the United Kingdom and subsequently traveled to the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago, where the child was conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF).… The first British designer baby, born in February of 2002, was also conceived at the Reproductive Genetics Institute.³¹

[Apparently human eggs are not even required to clone humans. Cow, pig and rabbit eggs infused with human DNA have shown their potential for developing human embryos. Advanced Cell Technology] took a cell from Dr Jose Cibelli, a research scientist and combined it with a cow’s egg from which the genes had already been removed. (News November 1998) The genes activated and the egg began to divide in the normal way up to the 32 cell stage at which it was destroyed.… Technically 1% of the human clone genes would have belonged to the cow — the mitochondria genes. Mitochondria are power generators in the cytoplasm of the cell. They grow and divide inside cells and are passed on from one generation to another. They are present in sperm and eggs. Judging by the successful growth of the combined human-cow clone creation it appears that cow mitochondria may well be compatible with human embryonic development. However the biggest piece of news is not what they did in human cloning — sensational enough — but the fact that they kept cloning secret for three years after doing it, and presumably they were trying to do it at least a couple of years before that.³²

	The chimeric animal shown [above] is a baby “geep”, made by combining a goat and sheep embryo. Notice the chimerism evident in the skin — big patches of skin on front and rear legs are covered with wool, representing the sheep contribution of the animal, while a majority of the remainder of the body is covered with hair, being derived from goat cells. — “Mosaicism and Chimerism,” at http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/ hbooks/ genetics/ medgen/ chromo/ mosaics.html

Strolling through the new zoo of scientific surreality, one finds a menagerie of bizarre “transgenic” species, including tobacco plants that contain firefly genes (so they glow in the dark), fish and tomatoes altered with antifreeze genes (so they can withstand cold temperatures), potatoes infused with chicken genes (to get your meat and potatoes in one dish?), chickens modified with cattle genes (to create a larger “macro-chicken”), [and] pigs that have human DNA (to increase their growth rate and size).^33, xvi [Scientists] have successfully crossed a camel and a llama, yielding something called a [“cama”] (pic). Researchers crossed a goat and sheep and came up with a “geep.” ^34, xvii In Greek mythology, the chimera was part lion, part goat, part dragon, and this creature terrorized the country Lycia. In real life, a chimera is a genetically engineered creature created from the DNA of different species. The chimera of the Greeks may have been a myth, but it’s a myth no longer,³⁵ [though a chimera] is not something you’re likely to come across unless you are an experimental embryologist or raise cattle.³⁶
[Chimeras are often created in the science of brain transplantation. Brain cells taken from foetal pigs, for example, have been grafted into the brains of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and researchers have also speculated that this technique could be used in the treatment of brain deterioration caused by alcoholism.]³⁷ [Unfortunately, the U.S. ban on the use of human embryonic cells apparently prevents creating undifferentiated tissue from cells obtained from the adult patient.] (Cloning one’s own cells could overcome the body’s tendency to reject transplanted tissue, researchers hope.)³⁸ [Instead, the focus has been on creating transgenic pigs for organ transplant.]

Transplanting genetically modified hearts and other organs from pigs to people could be possible in five to seven years,…scientists said [17 Feb 2002].³⁹ The prospect of pigs providing humans with an endless supply of compatible organs for transplant seemed one step closer [22 Aug 2002] after scientists announced they have cloned piglets lacking both copies of the gene that makes the human immune system reject pig tissue. PPL Therapeutics PLC, the Scottish company that…helped make Dolly the sheep,…announced that four healthy piglets with both copies of the gene “knocked out” were born (pic)…at the company’s U.S. subsidiary in Blacksburg, Va. A fifth piglet died shortly after birth of unknown causes, the company said.” Geoff Cook, chief executive officer of PPL Therapeutics,…predicted that studies testing pig organs in humans could start within two years — two years sooner than predicted earlier [in 2002] before the double knockout experiment.⁴⁰
Insulin-producing cells from pigs have been successfully transplanted into six children with type 1 diabetes, without the help of immune-suppressing drugs, according to researchers. And at least one child is insulin-free a year after the procedure, they reported [27 Aug 2002] at the XIX International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Miami, Florida.⁴¹

Solid grafts inserted as whole pieces into the brain have…been seen to become reinnervated from the host brain in adult and developing recipients.⁴² [Evan Balaban is possibly the most well-known researcher in this field with his quail-chick chimera. Balaban has demonstrated that behavior specific to one species can be transfered to another via transplantation of entire regions of the brain.]⁴³ [(Japanese quail are used for the experiments primarily because their neurons are distinct from chick neurons and easily differentiated.)]⁴⁴

	Jazz, an African wildcat kitten, is the result of the first successful interspecies transfer of a frozen embryo. Mother Cayenne is a domestic tabby cat. Jazz has since been cloned.

[Another biotechnology related to cloning is the use of interspecific gestation, or interspecific embryo transfer, that is, growing an embryo of one species in the uterus of another species.] The most common [embryo transfers] were between Bos taurus and B. indicus cattle. Other interspecific transfers involved Bos gaurus and B. taurus, cattle; Ovis musimon and O. aries, sheep; Equus asinus and E. caballus, horses.⁴⁵ Bengal tiger cubs, conceived as [in vitro fertilization] embryos, were born to a Siberian tiger dam after embryo transfer.… [And] Asiatic wildcat kittens were produced in a domestic cat female.⁴⁶ [Researchers have also experimented with animals from different genera such as mouse/rat and goat/sheep. The 1997 “Away in the Manger” episode of the Picket Fences television series even portrayed cows gestating human fetuses in the treatment of infertility.] Ideally — if the world is to turn to animal gestators — one of the primates might provide a better womb environment for a growing human fetus than a cow.⁴⁷ [The biggest hurdles to interspecific embryo transfer are immunological barriers and the ability of the placenta to attach to the uterus — problems that have in some cases been overcome by using chimeric trophoblasts, the cells that become the placenta. (Placentas are the interfaces between the embryo and its host. As long as there is an adequate blood supply, embryo development can occur almost anywhere, as demonstrated by so-called tubal pregnancies. An extreme example is an experiment by J. Mokry and S. Nemecek in which a trophoblast was allowed to attach to a brain.)]⁴⁸

Chinese doctors are close to finding a way to keep test tube babies alive outside the womb throughout the entire gestation period, while Japanese doctors have nearly perfected an artificial placenta. “There will be no need for wombs,” [Dr. Bernard] Nathanson said. “The womb will be an organ that is obsolete.” ⁴⁹

[One last biotechnology that should be mentioned is the reinervation of severed spinal cords. Experiments have demonstrated that grafted tissue is capable of repairing the damage. Y. Iwashita, S. Kawaguchi, and M. Murata, for example, replaced a segment of the spinal cord in rats.] The animals with replaced segments could walk, run and climb with almost normal hind-forelimb coordination. This functional restoration in these animals appeared to be permanent, raising the possibility for therapeutic application in humans.⁵⁰ [Researchers Lars Olson, Henrich Cheng, and Yihao Cao also] succeeded in restoring some muscle function to rats with severed spinal cords.… The animals, while not cured, were able to support their weight and hobble around their cages.⁵¹ Most of the research to date has been conducted on laboratory animals, but those experiments have set the stage for what scientists believe could be a burst of advances in human patients.… One of the most promising new therapies is a compound called Fampridine-SR (4-AP), now beginning final phases of testing in humans.… Meanwhile, dozens of other compounds, including various nerve-growth factors, have restored muscle activity in paralyzed animals. Nondrug strategies, especially electrical stimulation of spinal-cord nerves, are also raising hopes.… Lagging behind these efforts are treatments involving stem cells.^xviii… “There is a lot more research on spinal-cord injury today than 10 or 15 years ago,” says Dr. Fred Roisen of the University of Louisville.⁵²

	Robert White with monkey after head transplant (1970s)

The optimal combination of these technologies…will depend upon further research and the role…in society.⁵³ [While livestock breeding and medicine production are still the primary motivators behind the development of cloning technologies, society would benefit by applying these biotechnologies on humans.] A person with a healthy, vigorous mind might want to shed a shattered, badly diseased body.^54, xix A body transplant continues to be the bold dream of Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon, who performed the complex surgery three decades ago on monkeys at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.⁵⁵ “People are dying today who, if they had body transplants, in the spinal injury community would remain alive.” ⁵⁶ [In the not-so-distant future, people may be able to transfer the contents of their minds into new bodies grown specially for them. Brainless chimeric babies^xx sporting the best physical traits attached to healthy bodies will be gestated using hormones to accelerate growth to maturity. An adult would then have his or her rejuvinated brain transplanted into the sexy or otherwise utilitarian vessel as an original Twilight Zone television episode promised us, installing a wide array of brain implants during the procedure. By this time, nanotechnology might exist capable of copying information directly from one brain to another and supplementing it with data from libraries and the World Wide Web. The 1964 B-movie “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” anticipated this type of learning.]
Scientists have developed a cheap and easy cloning method to let technicians create cloned embryos with gear that could fit in a trailer and costs only a few thousand dollars, New Scientist magazine reported on [14 Aug 2002]. “It’s so much simpler than anything we are doing today, it’s dramatic,” the British science magazine quoted Michael Bishop, ex-president of US cattle-cloning company Infigen as saying. “It’s a huge step toward roboticizing the whole process.” Cloning advocates say it can be used by farmers to preserve the lines of prized livestock, and by protection groups to save endangered species. But opponents worry that cheaper and easier cloning could hasten the day when humans try to clone themselves.⁵⁷
[In time, society will demand human cloning be made available, much as artificial insemination was finally allowed to the public in the late 1970s.^xxi, xxii] Princeton professor and genetic researcher Lee M. Silver, in his 1997 book Remaking Eden, argues that advances in science and technology will force us to reconsider long-held notions of parenthood, childhood and the meaning of life itself. The use of “reprogenetics” to shape the destiny of humankind “will not be controlled by governments or societies or even the scientists who create it,” Silver wrote. ”There is no doubt about it. For better or worse, a new age is upon us. And whether we like it or not, the global marketplace will reign supreme.” ⁵⁸

On [10 April 2002] President Bush urged the Senate to outlaw all forms of cloning (video). His opinion clashes with that of many in the scientific community, which has broadly backed research using cloning techniques.⁵⁹ “It’s significant that even the president’s hand-picked panel of advisers rejected an outright ban on this promising medical research,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., a cloning supporter.⁶⁰
In a move that runs counter to Bush administration policy, California has adopted a [2002] law that opens the state’s doors to stem cell researchers.… Supporters of the California legislation say the law will attract scientists who someday may be able to cure or alleviate chronic and degenerative conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and spinal cord injuries, through the research.⁶¹ The move will attract “the best and the brightest” researchers to California, said Larry Goldstein, a professor at University of California San Diego, and halt the migration of stem cell researchers to other countries — like Singapore and Britain — where it is permitted.⁶² The bill, which requires the studies to be regulated, is mostly symbolic because it does not override the president’s policy on federal financing and does not set aside any new money for the research.⁶³
A special United Nations task force…propose[d] [22 Sep 2002] that cloning to create a human baby be banned in all of the body’s 190 member states,^xxiii a step that experts say is unprecedented in the U.N.’s 57-year history. “This is extraordinarily significant, especially since (the U.N.) has never before had any kind of a treaty covering a bioethics issue,” says George Annas, a professor of ethics at Boston University.⁶⁴ The United States, supported by 36 other nations, blocked an initiative by Germany and France [8 Nov 2002] for a worldwide ban on cloning to create human beings, insisting that the ban should include all forms of human cloning.^{65, xxiv, xxv, xxvi} The United Nations has given up its attempt to introduce a worldwide legal ban on some or all types of human cloning.⁶⁶
In February 2003, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act passed which makes it a crime for anyone, public or private to conduct Somatic Cell Nuclear Transplantation on a fertilized or unfertilized human egg cell for reproductive or therapeutic purposes.⁶⁷ The penalty for engaging in such research [is] a U.S. $1 million fine and a 10-year jail sentence.⁶⁸
The New Jersey state assembly on [15 Dec 2003] by a 41-31 vote passed what pro-life advocates are calling one of the most radical human cloning legalization bills ever proposed.… The bill [was] signed by the governor [on 4 Jan 2004, making it] legal in New Jersey to implant cloned human embryos into wombs, allow the baby to grow for nine months, and then destroy the unborn child for research. The bill prohibits the use of human cloning for reproductive purposes, but allows cloning to create unborn children only to be killed — either early after their creation for their stem cells or at any time before their birth.⁶⁹
President Bush reshuffled his advisory council on cloning and related medical issues on [27 Feb 2004, replacing two members in favor of therapeutic cloning with three] conservatives who have spoken out strongly against cloning.… Supporters of therapeutic cloning said they were stunned by the move and said it showed the White House was not interested in hearing neutral scientific advice. “The American people deserve the right science, not right-wing ideology, on critical issues facing their health,” [Sen. Edward Kennedy] said in a statement. “By firing two of the committee's most distinguished members, the administration is choosing once again the most divisive and ideological course, instead of seeking consensus.” ⁷⁰ [It's very similar to the way the Government held back on Medifast at first, keeping people in need from getting Medifast coupons to use.]

Sen. John Edwards told a group of health-care technology professionals [26 July 2004] that a Kerry-Edwards administration would permit more stem-cell research than is allowed under the Bush administration.… “We believe there’s more work that can be done in stem cell research that’s not being done,” he said.⁷¹
So far more than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel prize winners, have…signed a statement condemning the Bush administration for misusing, suppressing and distorting scientific advice.… Some scientists critical of the Bush administration make no secret that they would like to see the president defeated; four dozen Nobel laureates have endorsed John Kerry for president.⁷²
California voters approved a ballot measure on [2 Nov 2004] to spend $3 billion over the next 10 years on research of human embryonic stem cells, the largest state-run scientific research effort in the country.… The measure, Proposition 71, was backed by an assortment of wealthy business people, Hollywood personalities, scientists and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, who broke ranks with President Bush and the California Republican Party on the contentious issue.… Last year, the federal government spent $25 million on stem cell studies; with the passage of Proposition 71, California will spend $300 million a year beginning in 2005.⁷³

A microscopic photo released by Seoul National University shows eight cloned human embryos in the eight-cell stage (method, video).

If we ban the technology in America, we will fall behind other countries in the search for medical cures.^xxvii The wise course would be to keep both public and private research legal so that it will be done in the open and can be regulated.⁷⁴ Failure to investigate the possibility of easing the suffering of millions would be the real crime against humanity.⁷⁵

---

ⁱ Can a nation debate the merits of cloning when fewer than half its adults can give a decent definition of DNA?
— Malcolm Ritter (The Associated Press), “What we don’t know about science could fill books,” The Seattle Times, 19 June 2002.

ⁱⁱ Federally financed researchers can work only with “presidential cell lines,” the human cell lines established before [9 p.m. on] Aug. 9, 2001, which President Bush declared as the cutoff for permissible stem cell work.^*
— Nicholas Wade, “Stem Cell Mixing May Form a Human-Mouse Hybrid,” The New York Times, 27 Nov 2002.

^* President Bush’s policy was limited to 16 adult stem cell lines, some of which have died out.
— “Edwards vows broadening of stem cell research,” CNN.com, 26 July 2004.

ⁱⁱⁱ [Jacques Loeb] found that by treating sea urchin eggs with appropriate inorganic salt solutions he could initiate embryological development, a process which up to that time had required the sperm of the male sea urchin. Thus, physical chemistry could be a tool for altering the basic processes of reproduction.
— Elliott Walker, “The Effects of colchicine and phospholipids on Sea Urchin Development,” 2000 NSF Summer Research Fellowship for Teachers, at http://hyper.vcsun.org/HyperNews/nherr/get/nherr/NSF2/43.html.

^iv Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Massachusetts, have…repeatedly created embryos using a process called parthenogenesis — using only a human egg cell and no sperm, and without cloning.… The resulting blastocyst, called a parthenote, can be a source of embryonic stem cells. Tissue from such cells would be easier to match with patients and less likely to be rejected, [ACT medical director Dr. Robert] Lanza said, because they contain only one person’s DNA.… It would take just 40 batches, or lines, of parthenote-generated stem cells to create tissue matches for 70 percent of the U.S. public, Lanza said. Embryonic stem cells are immortal, so it would not take many human eggs to create several dozen lines.
— “Human clone experiment repeated successfully,” CNN.com, 16 Dec 2003.

^v Because of a patent application, her birth was kept secret for months. Then, on Feb. 27, 1997, a paper appeared in the British journal Nature, called Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells, and Dolly became a celebrity. She was…created from frozen and stored udder cells of a sheep that had died years before.
— Gina Kolata, “Dolly, the First Cloned Mammal, Is Dead,” ^* The New York Times, 14 Feb 2003.

^* [Dolly developed a virus-induced lung tumor and was euthanized at age 6.^†] It is not clear how long Dolly might have been expected to live because the natural life spans of sheep have not been well studied. “Nine months and then we eat them,” Dr. [Ian] Wilmut said. He added that while it is possible for pastured sheep to live for 11 or 12 years, those who live indoors, as Dolly had, are prone to develop lung infections. Dolly was kept inside for security reasons.
— Gina Kolata, “First Mammal Clone Dies; Dolly Made Science History,” The New York Times, 15 Feb 2003.

^† The stuffed remains of Dolly…were unveiled on [9 April 2003] at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.… The festival…celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA.
— Reuters, “Cloned Sheep Dolly, Now Stuffed, Goes on Display,” Yahoo! News, 9 April 2003.

^vi Scientists had to create nearly 300 embryos to achieve the birth of Dolly the sheep.^*
— Tim Friend, “Scientist says he will begin human cloning,” USA Today, 13 Aug 2002.

^* The people that clone animals have discovered that maybe three to six out of 100 attempts at making a clone actually proceed to a live birth,^† a rate that suggests a lot of luck. The hottest area of cloning research is in “reprogramming” adult DNA for embryonic development. The biotech industry is pouring tens of millions of dollars into figuring this out.
— Tim Friend (USA Today), “Group’s claim of cloned human unleashes ‘ground zero’ debate,” Yahoo! News, 30 Dec 2002.

^† “The fertility rate of cloned embryos has been upgraded to 27.3 percent, indicating that mass production is now feasible,” [Shen Peng-chih, a Taiwan Livestock Research Institute researcher,] explained, adding that the fertility rate of frozen embryos reached 12.5 percent.
— “Four dairy cows cloned from one parent,” chinapost.com.tw, (25) 26 May 2004.

^vii The process of cloning introduces…genetic mutations, and there seems no immediate way around the problem, Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported.^*
— Maggie Fox (Reuters), “U.S. Study Says All Clones Genetically Abnormal,” Yahoo! News, 12 Sep 2002.

^viii In a secret, locked barn near DeForest, [Wisconsin,] five black-and-white calves…are part human. The five calves are clones, which is eerie enough. In addition, human DNA was added to their genetic makeup when they were embryos.… These humanoid calves offer a window into a future in which lines are blurred between humans and other species.… Francis Fukuyama, in his brilliant…book on cloning, “Our Post-Human Future,” warns that we could face a future “in which any notion of ‘shared humanity’ is lost, because we have mixed human genes with those of so many other species that we no longer have a clear idea of what a human being is.”
— Nicholas D. Kristof, “Interview With a Humanoid,” The New York Times, 23 July 2002.

(AP Photo / Kevin P. Casey)

^ix Idaho Gem, born May 4, [2004], was the first successful cloning of an equine. He was followed by his siblings, Utah Pioneer, on June 9, and Idaho Star, on July 27. The clonings were a project of the Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. All three were born to surrogate mares from embryos that were cloned using eggs from horses and cells taken from the 45-day-old fetus of a mule. The cloned mules are the true siblings of Taz, a famous racing mule. Researchers bred Taz's parents, a jack donkey and a horse mare, and allowed the resulting fetus to grow for 45 days. This provided the DNA needed for the clones.
— The Associated Press, “Cloned mules healthy,” International Herald Tribune, 17 Feb 2004.

^x Dr. [Tanja] Dominko, one of the principle researchers trying to clone monkeys, spent three years, and made more than 300 attempts, to no avail. Working at the Oregon Primate Research Center, at a well-financed laboratory, she and her colleagues never got a single pregnancy.^* Instead, the cloning efforts produced grotesquely abnormal embryos, some with cells with no chromosomes, some with multiple nuclei, including one cell had nine nuclei. She called the embryos her “gallery of horrors.”
— Gina Kolata, “Experts Are Suspicious of Claim of Cloned Human’s Birth,” The New York Times, 28 Dec 2002.

^* [University of Pittsburgh’s Gerald Schatten’s] scientific team reported earlier [in 2003] that removing the nucleus from a monkey egg also removes two key proteins. Without them, the egg doesn’t stand a chance of growing into a new monkey. Schatten figures this problem will be overcome and newborn monkeys will eventually follow.^†
— Malcom Ritter (The Associated Press), “Scientists Seek Efficient Cloning Process,” Yahoo! News, 8 Nov 2003.

^† Monkey embryos have been successfully cloned for the first time (photos), and embryonic stem cells have been extracted from them, scientists reported [6 Dec 2004].… Of 49 cloned embryos, three developed to the blastocyst stage and yielded embryonic stem cells (ESCs), the team revealed at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Washington DC, US. No embryos survived to later stages, suggesting that production of a viable cloned offspring remains far in the future.
— “Monkey embryos cloned for the first time,” NewScientist.com, 6 Dec 2004.

^* The study, which looked at the genetic make-up of certain organs in cloned mice, found that as many as one in 25 genes might be abnormal in a clone’s placenta, according to the report published in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
— Linda Carroll (Reuters), “Early Flaws in Gene Programming May Doom Clones,” Yahoo! News, 9 Sep 2002.

^xi Raëlians are followers of Raël [(Claude Vorilhon) (pic)], a French-born former race-car driver who has said he met a four-foot space alien atop a volcano in southern France in 1973 and went aboard his ship, where he was entertained by voluptuous female robots and learned that the first humans were created 25,000 years ago by space travelers called Elohim, who cloned themselves.
— Donald G. McNeil Jr., “Religious Sect Says It Will Announce the First Cloned Baby,” The New York Times, 27 Dec 2002.

^xii Clonaid says three more cloned babies are due to be born before the end of [January 2003].^*
— “Scientists Dismiss Second Human Cloning Claim,” VOA News, 5 Jan 2003.

^* [Clonaid] claims to have produced 13 cloned babies worldwide.
— “Singapore warns against cloning,” iol, 23 June 2004.

^xiii A woman carrying a cloned human embryo should give birth in early January [2003], controversial Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori has said. He told journalists the woman’s pregnancy was in its 33rd week, and the male fetus, which weighed 2.7kg, was healthy, with a “more than a 90 per cent chance” of being born. The gynaecologist also confirmed that two other woman were pregnant with cloned embryos, one them [sic] in the 28th week and the other in the 27th.
— “Human clone ‘to be born soon’,” NEWS.com.au, (26) 27 Nov 2002; See also “Woman to give birth to cloned baby,” The Age, (26) 27 Nov 2002; Reuters, “Italian Doctor Says Cloned Baby Due in January,” ABC News.com, 26 Nov 2002; “Doctor claims cloned baby due in January,” CNN.com, 26 Nov 2002.

^xiv Panos Zavos, an American reproductive specialist, told a news conference in London…that he had implanted a freshly-cloned embryo into a woman.… Scientists…are challenging the maverick fertility expert to prove it.
— Raymond Duncan, “Church attacks ‘hypocrisy’ in outcry over cloning claim,” The Herald, 19 Jan 2004.

^xv Genetic selection of embryos is today a growing industry. Some experts hail assisted reproduction as the route to genetically sound babies. While directed genetic change of human embryos (even for therapeutic purposes) may be a long way off, it has been accomplished in primates in the laboratory.
— Leon R. Kass, “How One Clone Leads to Another,” The New York Times, 24 Jan 2003.

^xvi Since the double helix discovery 50 years ago, people have been haunted by fears of what scientists might do with their growing genetic knowledge.… Among the scariest prospects have been recombinant DNA research (“gene splicing”), cross-species genetic engineering (mixing human DNA into animals), genetically modified crops (known derisively as “Frankenfoods”), genetic enhancement (inserting supposedly desirable genes into embryos) and germ line gene therapy (changing the genes in the egg or sperm).
— Robin Marantz Henig, “Deciding When Science Has Gone Astray,” The New York Times, 25 Feb 2003.

^xvii A group of American and Canadian biologists is debating whether to recommend stem cell experiments that would involve creating a human-mouse hybrid.… But if the human stem cells are tested that way in mice, any animals born from the experiment would be chimeras…with human cells distributed throughout their body. Though the creatures would probably be mice with a few human cells that obey mouse rules, the outcome of such an experiment cannot be predicted. A mouse with a brain made entirely of human cells would probably discomfort many people,^* as would a mouse that generated human sperm or eggs.^†
— Wade, “Stem Cell Mixing.”

^* In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California's Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells. Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells. In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human.
— “‘Stuart Little’ mouse soon to have a human brain,” Keralanext.com, 7 March 2005.

^† Of course, the idea of using part-human, part-animal chimeras as living factories for producing cells or organs raises a host of ethical and safety issues. There is the risk of transferring animal diseases to humans, for a start. And the creation of such chimeras has long been controversial. Is a sheep with human cells making up part of its brain no longer just a sheep?^††
— “‘Humanised’ organs can be grown in animals,” NewScientist.com, 17 Dec 2003.

^†† [Esmail] Zanjani’s team hopes the animal-human chimeras they are creating will one day yield new cells genetically identical to a patient’s own for repairing damaged organs, and perhaps larger pieces for transplantation.… The human cells must be injected around halfway through gestation — before the fetus’s immune system has learned the difference between its own and foreign cells, so that the animal does not reject them, but after the body plan has formed. That ensures that the resulting animals look like normal sheep rather than strange hybrids like the “geep”.
— Op. cit.

^xviii Nerve cells derived from human embryonic stem cells and transplanted into paralysed rats have enabled the animals to walk again. The findings add to a growing number of studies that suggest embryonic stem cells could have a valuable role to play in treating spinal injuries.
— “Stem cells enable paralysed rats to walk,” NewScientist.com, 3 July 2003.

^xix As an individual one is essentially, in a physical sense, one’s brain, the remainder of the body simply being used to live in and react with the world around [N. Malcom, “Scientific Materialism and the Identity Theory,” in C. Borst (ed.), The Mind/Brain Identity Theory (London: Macmillian, 1970]. It is therefore more appropriate to think of a whole body transplant around a brain rather than vice versa.
— Kevin Warwick, In the Mind of the Machine (London: Arrow Books Limited, 1998), pp. 90-91.

^xx The chances of any ethical body giving permission for a chimaeric embryo — a blend of two people — to be implanted in a human is unrealistic even in a decade.
— Martin Hutchinson, “Have the scientists gone too far?” BBC, 3 July 2003.

^xxi The product, on July 25, 1978, was not some sinister monster, but simply Louise Joy Brown (2003 pic), the first test-tube baby and an instant sensation. Chubby and yelling, baby Louise could never have been naturally conceived — her mother’s fallopian tubes were hopelessly blocked, cutting off eggs from sperm. But egg and sperm did meet — in a dish, in a lab, in a gray English town — introduced to each other by the scientist-doctor team of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe. Today, as Louise Brown approaches her 25th birthday, a once-stupendous and controversial accomplishment has become routine. In vitro fertilization is an outpatient procedure conducted at nearly 400 clinics in the United States alone. More than 1 million children conceived in lab dishes now walk the Earth.
— Rosie Mestel, “Birth by Test Tube Turns 25; Now routine — more than 1 million people have been born in vitro — the procedure began life amid disapproval, risk and chance events,” Newsday.com, 24 July 2003.

	A fatherless mouse, created by Japanese and Korean scientists without using sperm in a reproductive feat, gives birth in this handout photo released by Prof. Tomohiro Kono of Tokyo University of Agriculture in Tokyo April 22, 2004. The birth of Kaguya, the daughter of two female mice, which is reported in the science journal Nature…by Kono, shows that a healthy mammal known as a parthenote can be created without any male help. (Reuters - Handout)

^xxii Since the 1970’s, fertility clinics have created almost a million children through experimental technologies. They’ve used untested and unregulated procedures to inject sperm into eggs, to grow embryos on cells from cows and monkeys, even to combine eggs from two mothers and create children with DNA from three parents.^* The public, it seems, has remained blissfully unaware. Little wonder, since reproductive medicine has enabled thousands of infertile couples to have babies. Indeed, it’s been a blessing for them. But that blessing has also been a powerful distraction from a medical safety issue. Just within the last year, a stream of studies has found that infertility treatments may carry potentially fatal risks. In March 2002, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the occurrence of major birth defects more than doubles, from 4 percent to about 9 percent, with common infertility treatments like in vitro fertilization and intercytoplasmic sperm injection — the procedure for injecting sperm directly into an egg. So far in 2003, three more studies produced similar data: one found an increased risk of Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which causes enlarged organs and childhood cancer; another found a five- to seven-fold increased risk of retinoblastoma, a malignant eye tumor. So far, the number of reported cases is small, but they warrant thorough investigation.
— Rebecca L. Skloot, “The Other Baby Experiment,” The New York Times, 22 Feb 2003.

^* Scientists are studying a variation on cloning that — if it works — could lead to a new treatment for infertility and give same-sex couples the ability to create babies that share their DNA. [See haploidization]
— William Hathaway, “Technique Holds Controversial Promise For Same-Sex Couples,” Hartford Courant, 18 Oct 2002.

^xxiii Approximately 33 countries have formally banned human cloning: they include Australia, Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago and the United Kingdom (source: Center for Genetics and Society).
— “Science Academies Call For A Ban On Human Reproductive Cloning,” 22 Sep 2003, at http://www.geocities.com/giantfideli/art/CellNEWS_IAP_CloningBan.html.

^xxiv The United States and about 50 other countries are pushing to ban all forms of human cloning. Fourteen other countries — including Britain, Japan and China — are lobbying for a ban only on production of babies. That would allow scientists to use “stem cells” gathered from human embryo clones for medical treatments.
— Edith M. Lederer (The Associated Press), “U.N. Delays Any Treaty on Human Cloning,” Yahoo! News, 6 Nov 2003.

^xxv Sweden, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands and Britain allow harvesting stem cells from so-called supernumerary embryos — extras resulting from in vitro fertilization — under certain conditions. Britain is the only [European Union] member state that allows the creation of human embryos for stem cell procurement.
— Paul Geitner (The Associated Press), “EU Money for Stem Cells May Be Doomed,” Yahoo! News, 14 Nov 2003.

^xxvi The Israeli Health Ministry has given the go-ahead to cloning of human beings for experimentation.
— “Israel’s Health Committee Approves Human Cloning In Principle,” LifeSite, 12 March 2004.

^xxvii It’s official: The United States has fallen significantly behind in mining the promising field of stem cell research to treat disease.… U.S. researchers say the therapeutic cloning accomplished by the South Koreans…mirrors research brought to a virtual standstill in this country by domestic politics.… Chinese researchers last year reported fusing human skin cells with rabbit eggs to produce early stage embryos, which in turn yielded stem cells. The government is also building a stem cell research center. England, Israel and several other countries also have more advanced stem cell programs.
— Paul Elias (The Associated Press), “United States losing edge in stem cell research,” San Francisco Chronicle, 12 Feb 2004; See also Paul Elias, “America lags in stem cell research,” MSNBC, 13 Feb 2004.