Dolly creator may clone humans
2005-02-27 14:57
London - Britain granted the scientist who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, a licence to clone human embryos for medical research, triggering an outcry among opposition groups.
Ian Wilmut from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, dismissing fears that his work would lead to reproductive cloning, said the licence would allow him and his team to study the fatal motor neuron disease (MND).
"Our aim will be to generate stem cells purely for research purposes," said Wilmut, who will also work with researchers from King's College university in London.
It is only the second time that Britain's fertility body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, has issued a licence for therapeutic cloning research, which has been legal in the country since 2001.
"Human beings have been changing the world around them for a very long time, in general to good effect," Wilmut told a news conference in Edinburgh.
"I think that the majority of people support this type of research and hope it will be successful in helping to bring useful treatment for diseases like motor neurone disease," he said.
Stem cells
Wilmut's team plans to extract stem cells from patients with MND and implant them in unfertilised eggs to create cloned embryos.
They will then harvest stem cells from the embryos to grow motor neurones - the long nerves which transmit electrical messages from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles.
The technique will not be used to correct the disease, which is caused by the death of motor neurones and affects about 5 000 people in Britain, but the study of the cells could help to develop future treatments.
Wilmut shot to fame in July 1996 when he created Dolly the sheep, the first mammal ever to be cloned from an adult cell. Dolly was put down two years ago this month after she developed a lung disease.
Critics of embryo cloning fear that Britain is one step closer to authorising the creation of human clones, but Wilmut dismissed such fears.
'Clone and kill'
"This is not reproductive cloning in any way. The eggs we use will not be allowed to grow beyond 14 days," he said.
"Once the stem cells are removed for cell culture, the remaining cells will be destroyed. The embryonic stem cells that we derive in this way will only be used for research into motor neurone disease," he said.
Anthony Ozimic, political secretary of the pro-life group Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, accused the government of granting a licence to "clone and kill" and warned that the next step would be manufactured humans.
"Any 'licence to clone and kill' strikes at the very heart our society's basic rule for living together in peace, which is do not kill the innocent," Ozimic said in a statement.
"All of those killed are unique, never-to-be-replaced, totally innocent human individuals."
Slippery slope
Ozimic denied that there was any difference between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning, which is banned in Britain, and feared the government would be pressured to allow scientists to reproduce humans in future.
"It will start a slippery slope," Ozimic told AFP, urging the fertility authority to suspend all licences until the United Nations, which is debating the issue of human cloning, makes a decision.
For his part, Wilmut rejected such concerns and said his team would back any decision by the United Nations related to cloning.