No Cloning !

The possibility of human cloning, raised when Scottish scientists at Roslin Institute created the much-celebrated sheep "Dolly" (Nature 385, 810-13, 1997), has aroused worldwide interest and concern because of its scientific and ethical implications. The feat, cited by Science magazine as the breakthrough of 1997, also has generated uncertainty over the meaning of "cloning" --an umbrella term traditionally used by scientists to describe different processes for duplicating biological material.
What is cloning?
To Human Genome Project researchers, cloning refers to copying genes and other pieces of chromosomes to generate enough identical material for further study. Two other types of cloning produce complete, genetically identical animals. Blastomere separation (sometimes called "twinning" after the naturally occurring process that creates identical twins) involves splitting a developing embryo soon after fertilization of the egg by a sperm (sexual reproduction) to give rise to two or more embryos. The resulting organisms are identical twins (clones) containing DNA from both the mother and the father. Dolly, on the other hand, is the result of another type of cloning that produces an animal carrying the DNA of only one parent. Using somatic cell nuclear transfer, scientists transferred genetic material from the nucleus of an adult sheep's udder cell to an egg whose nucleus, and thus its genetic material, had been removed. (All cells that are not egg or sperm cells are somatic cells.)
Why clone?
One goal of this and similar research is to develop efficient ways to alter animals genetically and reproduce them reliably. Alterations have included adding genes (such as those for human proteins) to create drug-producing animals as well as inactivating genes to study the effects and possibly create animal models of human diseases. Cloning technology also may someday be usedin humans to produce whole organs from single cells or to raise animals having genetically altered organs suitable for transplanting to humans.
The technique used to produce Dolly and other cloned animals is an extension of 40 years of research using DNA from nonhuman embryonic and fetal cells. Before this demonstration, scientists believed that once a cell became specialized a liver, heart, udder, bone, or any other type of cell the change was permanent and other unneeded genes in the cell became inactive. Dolly's creators demonstrated that nuclei of an adult animal's specialized cells can be made to revert to a nonspecialized, embryonic state, thus restoring the ability to give rise to any kind of cell. Explorations into how cells revert to an undifferentiated state may provide insights into the process by which cells become cancerous.
Using the same technique that produced Dolly, researchers have cloned a number of large and small animals including sheep, goats, mice and cows. But scientists remain uncertain about whether genetic changes in the cells used to obtain nuclei will lead to adverse effects on the health of the cloned animals.

http://cloning.tripod.com

Earlier this year, Dr Antinori predicted that he would complete the first human cloning operation within 18 months.

Antinori justifies his work as an attempt to help infertile couples

The 55-year-old Dr Antinori was previously best known for his work in in vitro fertilisation, and in particular for enabling women in their 50s and 60s to give birth.

He shot to prominence in 1994 when he helped a 63-year-old woman to have a baby by implanting a donor's fertilised egg in her uterus, making her the oldest known women in the world to give birth.

Infertility treatment

Dr Antinori, who runs a fertility clinic in Rome, plans to make his method of human cloning available to couples who cannot have children by any other means - for example, when test tube fertilisation is impossible because the man produces no sperm.

"Cloning will help us put an end to so many diseases, give infertile men the chance to have children. We can't miss this opportunity." Dr Severino Antinori

Genetic material from the father would be injected into an egg, which would then be implanted into the woman's womb to grow.

The resulting child would, in theory, have exactly the same physical characteristics as the father.

Dr Antinori told an Italian newspaper recently that more than 1,500 couples had volunteered as candidates for his research programme, and that he planned to start producing embryo clones in November.

He is working in close co-operation with Dr Panos Zavos, an American fertility expert.

Strong opposition

Dr Antinori faces scepticism from the scientific community that he can successfully clone a human being.

Some scientists argue that the process is not safe and that subjects would risk hidden health defects which would emerge only later in life.

He also faces the outrage of those who oppose the procedure on ethical and moral grounds. The practice of human cloning is banned in Europe and formal legislation is now going through Congress in the United States.

Dr Antinori has proposed carrying out the procedure in an unnamed Mediterranean country, or on a boat in international waters.

In 1998, Dr Antinori told the BBC it would be immoral to try to clone humans just for the sake of it, but he justified his work as an attempt to help infertile couples.

"Generally, people are against human cloning, and I blame the media for pre-judging it. I want to bring society with me, and persuade people that it is right in rare cases to help infertile couples," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1477000/1477698.stm

Overview:
It is unfortunate that the term "cloning" refers to three very different procedures with three very different goals. It is also unfortunate that the first thought many people have when they hear the term is of horror movies which have showed the creation of human monsters or of armies of superhuman soldiers. Reality of cloning is very different.
The three different types of "cloning" are:
Embryo cloning: This is a medical technique which produces monozygotic (identical) twins or triplets. It duplicates the process that nature uses to produce twins or triplets. One or more cells are removed from a fertilized embryo and encouraged to develop into one or more duplicate embryos. Twins or triplets are thus formed, with identical DNA. This has been done for many years on various species of animals; only very limited experimentation has been done on humans.
Adult DNA cloning: (aka cell nuclear replacement) This technique produces a duplicate of an existing animal. It has been used to clone a sheep and other mammals. The DNA from an embryo is removed and replaced with the DNA from an adult animal. Then, the embryo is implanted in a womb and allowed to develop into a new animal. It has not been tried on humans. It has the potential of producing a twin of an existing person.
Therapeutic cloning: This is a procedure that starts off like adult DNA cloning. However, the stem cells are removed from the embryo with the intent of producing tissue or a whole organ for transplant back into the person who supplied the DNA. The embryo dies in the process. The goal of therapeutic cloning is to produce a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ for transplant. This technique would be vastly superior to relying on organ transplants from other people. The supply would be unlimited, so there would be no waiting lists. The tissue or organ would have the sick person's original DNA; no immunosuppressant drugs would need to be taken.
There are major ethical concerns about all three types of cloning, when applied to humans.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/cloning.htm

Die ethische Debatte über Möglichkeit und Praxis ist – wie einige meinen, zu spät - entbrannt. Jüngstes Beispiel: Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft befürwortet, Stammzellen an Embryonen zu erforschen. Dies lehnen Kirchenleute, aber auch Politiker wie die Justizministerin Hertha Däubler-Gmelin (SPD) ab. Andere sind zumindest für eingeschränkte Gentests bei künstlich befruchteten Embyros, um Krankheiten auszuschließen. WELT online dokumentiert die laufende Debatte.

http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/gentechnik/index.htx

There has always been a theoretical possibility that the clones of adult animals were in fact the result of cloning from unspecialised stem cells hidden within the highly specialised tissues of a fully grown animal.

This meant that although it was plausible to believe Dolly had resulted from the cloning of the specialised skin cell of a six-year-old ewe, it was equally plausible that she might have been "accidentally" cloned from an adult stem cell lurking in the skin.

Now two scientists have proved beyond doubt that fully specialised cells can give rise to clones, which opens the prospect of there being two ways to clone from adult tissues - by cloning either from specialised cells or from adult stem cells.

Konrad Hochedlinger and Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published their study in the online edition of the journal Nature.

"We've proven for the first time that it's possible to clone a mouse from adult cells. This question has not been answered by any of the cloning experiments to date," Dr Hochedlinger said.

The scientists cloned adult mice from mature white blood cells using a new two-step process that might one day be used by doctors to generate replacement tissues for transplant operations from a drop of patient's blood.

Dr Hochedlinger says the likelihood is that adult stem cells may be far easier to clone than specialised adult cells. This means that if adult stem cells can be distinguished from other adult cells - which is easily done at the moment - human cloning for both reproductive and therapeutic purposes may prove to be far easier than originally thought.

"An important question for the future is whether stem cells from adults would give higher efficiencies for cloning. This might be very important for clinical applications," Dr Hochedlinger said.

"We believe that stem cells from adults are easier to reprogramme so it might mean fewer errors in the procedure. It may be safer, but it needs to be shown," he said. If cloning is shown to be safer that sceptics claim, then anti-cloners will find it increasingly difficult to stop infertile couples conceiving a cloned child.

(Edited by George E Waite at 7:52 am on Feb. 12, 2002)

http://www.reproductivecloning.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard//topic.cgi?forum=2&topic=28

Nearly every month, there's news of how cloning technology is poised to change our lives. From agriculture to medicine, from psychology to law, New Scientist's team has followed the potential impact of cloning and stem cell technology every step of the way.

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/cloning