Dolly creators want cloning licence
2004-04-21 12:31
London - The Scottish institute that cloned the first mammal - Dolly the sheep - wants to clone human embryos to study motor neurone disease.
Professor Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh has put in an application to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority under the terms of legislation passed in 2001 that allows therapeutic cloning for research.
Wilmut has stressed that his team has no intention of producing cloned babies, and said the embryos would be destroyed after experimentation.
"Because at this early stage the embryo does not have that key human characteristic of being aware, to me it would be immoral not to take this opportunity to study diseases," Wilmut told the BBC on Wednesday.
MND, which is caused by the death of cells called motor neurones that control movement in the brain and spinal cord, affects about 5 00 people in Britain. Half of people with MND die within 14 months of diagnosis.
Wilmut's team plan to take DNA from a person with MND and implant it into a human egg. The embryo would then grow, and scientists would remove cells to study them, and further understanding of the disease.
His team is the first to apply for a therapeutic cloning licence in Britain.
Wilmut accepted his research would face opposition and said it was essential to show respect for humans at any stage of their lives.
"Of course, to some people, to do anything with a human embryo is a deeply offensive idea," he said.
"I think it is critical that we understand exactly the stage of development that we will be producing. Human embryos at this stage are so small that you can't see them without the aid of a microscope.
"They have perhaps 200 cells. There is almost no differentiation into the different cell types," he said.
Wilmut has shown scepticism in the past over claims by other scientists to have cloned human babies, pointing to the many difficulties his team found in cloning other animals.
Dolly the sheep became famous as the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, but was put down in February last year.
A veterinary examination showed she had a progressive lung disease. Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, but her existence was revealed to the public only the following year. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA