By Jeff Donn
Associated Press
BOSTON – A company’s claim that it is first to clone a human embryo has drawn opposition from the White House, the Vatican and other abortion foes who see it as a step toward cloning human beings.
Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester say they hope to develop genetically compatible replacement cells for patients with a range of illnesses – not human clones.
“This work sets the stage for human therapeutic cloning as a potentially limitless source of immune-compatible cells for tissue engineering and transplantation medicine,” said Dr. Robert P. Lanza, one of the company’s researchers.
President Bush said today that the breakthrough was “morally wrong, in my opinion.”
“We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it,” Bush said.
Several states, including California, have banned human cloning, and Congress is considering a ban. But company officials insisted their work is the first step in providing hope for people with spinal injuries, heart disease and other ailments.
Lanza and the company’s top executive Michael West said they had no interest in transplanting such early embryos into a woman’s womb to give birth to a cloned human being, nor was it clear that their embryo would be capable of that.
But critics of cloning, including the National Right to Life Committee, wasted little time attacking the announcement.
“This corporation is creating human embryos for the sole purpose of killing them and harvesting their cells,” said its legislative director, Douglas Johnson. “Unless Congress acts quickly, this corporation and others will be opening human embryo farms.”
A top Vatican official, Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone, also condemned the cloning, saying that while the goal of curing disease is laudable, “the end doesn’t justify the means.” Vatican teaching holds that life begins at conception, so destroying an embryo would end a human life.
Speaking on NBC’s “Today” show, West replied that the work does not involve human life, but rather “cellular life, a fundamental distinction.”
“I consider myself pro-life, by the way, and I do not see this as a pro-life issue at all,” West said.
Advanced Cell Technology announced its findings Sunday online in the journal e-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine. The research was also described online in Scientific American.
Glenn McGee, a critic of the company who once sat on its ethics board,said its announcement was premature and would serve only to encourage opposition to cloning. McGee, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, called the announcement “nothing but hype.”
He said the company’s report lacks any significant details, including what cells company scientists actually grew from the cloned embryo.
“They are doing science by press release,” he said.
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to ban human cloning, and the Senate is considering such a ban. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said, “I believe it will be perhaps a big debate, but at the end of the day, I don’t believe that we’re going to let the cloning of human embryos go on.”
Bush is allowing federal funding of research on existing stem cell lines. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said today that the president hopes “this first crossing of the line” will spur the Senate to act on House legislation.
The researchers say they cloned a six-cell human embryo starting with a donated female egg cell. They removed its nucleus and replaced it with a cumulus cell, complete with its genetic DNA. Cumulus cells normally help nurture eggs as they develop.
Such a technique could yield replacement cells only for women of childbearing age. But the researchers have also experimented with injecting cells with DNA from skin cells.
The company’s research rules called for the embryo to be destroyed after two weeks. In its report on the experiment, Advanced Cell said the embryo stopped growing.
In a separate experiment, the researchers say they were able to develop a more advanced embryo, known as a blastocyst, in a process known as parthenogenesis. They bathed an egg cell with chemicals that changed its concentration of charged particles, reprogramming it to form an embryo.
The research was said to be very preliminary. Neither experiment was found to produce the master cells known as stem cells, which can develop into other body tissues.
However, researchers hope they will eventually be able to develop and harvest stem cells from such embryos to grow replacement cells. They would be genetically compatible, because they would derive from a patient’s own cells.
Other researchers also have plunged into cloning. Some aim at reproductive cloning to produce a new person, but most hope to carry out therapeutic cloning to yield stem cells for treating spinal cord injuries, heart disease, cancer and other ailments.
A second company quickly claimed in unpublished research Sunday it had also cloned human embryos. That company, Clonaid, hopes eventually to clone human beings. “I’m very pleased that I’m not alone,” Director Brigitte Boisselier said. “We’re doing embryos every day.”
She refused to give details of the work. The company says it keeps its laboratory location secret for security reasons.
Many scientists say cloning of cows, sheep and other animals has produced some mysterious defects. They say the science is too weak to justify cloning a person, but they hold strong hope for cloning to produce replacement cells.
Dr. Norman Fost, director of the bioethics program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the work of the Massachusetts researchers is “a basic part of making stem-cell research useful for human beings.” He said most Americans favor such science.
Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, predicted that Congress will ultimately allow human cloning for therapeutic purposes. “Therapeutic cloning has been gaining allies as its applications are understood,” he said.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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