Cloning License for Dolly's Doc

Rollie Hawk writes "Ian Wilmut, leader of Dolly the sheep's team and Professor at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, has been given the green light by the British government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to start further cloning research. As a matter of fact, he is now a licensed human cloner. The license has a duration of one year and is the second of its kind given by Britain, the first country to officially sanction human cloning research. Research will be focusing on motor neurone disease (MND). The team hopes to perform cell nuclear replacement on the skin cells of MND victims in order to create stem cells, the jack-of-all-trades of the cell family and the supposed magic bullets for ailments ranging from Alzheimer's to paralysis.

Comments

Not human cloning.

[Anonymous Coward]

He has a license to clone human embreyos, not clone humans which would be an entirely different matter. The purpose being so he/his team can study diseases which effect motor neurons, by growing them from cloned embreyos using the material from a sufferor of motor neuron disease.

Re:So.....

[jacob_jackson]

Last August, a team of scientists from Newcastle University in northern England was granted a license to clone human embryos to develop new treatments for diabetes and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=hea lthNews&storyID=7569803&pageNumber=1)

Re:should I write a novel?

[doublem]

Been Done

Of course, the movie is only intersting if you see the MST3K version.

Re:Certainty

[jackelfish]

They are not creating embryos, they are attempting to create pluripotent cells, from skin cells, in an attempt to replace malfunctioning neurons. There is not an entire organism involved here as they are not using gametes (eggs or sperm) in these experiments. This is where the term "cloning" becomes confused, in that many people think it always refers to the duplication of a whole organism (such as Dolly) where it simply means to insert foreign DNA into a cell.

Re:Certainty

[jackelfish]

Let me correct myself. It seems that in this case they will be actually inserting the DNA into an unfertilized egg in an attempt to study the development of the disease. That said, many of these diseases also have an autoimmune aspect that can be triggered later on in development and as with any science there are numerous factors that can not be controlled for. Therefore we have to take the results at face value and not read too much into them, as is quite often the case.

Re:Thank you Bush!

[dsanfte]

It's politically risky for private US firms to dabble in embryonic stem cell research and theraputic cloning. That's why they're abstaining, not because the results wouldn't be profitable.

Not so fast Einstein

[KarmaBlackballed]

But when you *clone* something, everyone screams, think about our children, when it is really totally harmless

I don't have any answers, but feel compelled to point out that so far cloning is not known to be harmless. Specifically, as far as I know all cloned mammals have a cell age equivalent to that of the cell donor. The cell age is measured by the length of the cell telemers. (When the telemers become too short, the cell dies. Telemers get shorter with every cell division.)

you can extend telomeres

[nounderscores]

using telomerase - it's an enzyme discovered by accident in cancer research. Cancer cells express it atopically and have infinite lifespans (killing you). Telomerase is supposed to be active in the cells that give rise to your sperm and egg to keep them forever young.