EXPERT CALLS GLOBAL BAN ON HUMAN CLONING

PA 16.12.98 15:35


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By Jackie Brown, PA News
A British expert today called for an immediate global ban to prevent the creation of human clones.
Dr Patrick Dixon, an authority on the ethics of human cloning, issued his call after a South Korean medical research team said it had succeeded in cultivating a human embryo using human cells in one of the first such experiments of its kind.
Researchers at the infertility clinic of Kyunghee University in Seoul said it had used the "Honolulu technique" to cultivate a human embryo in its early stage from a single cell implanted in a woman's ovum.
In July, a team of researchers at the University of Hawaii announced that it had used the same method to create more than 50 carbon-copy mice.
Dr Dixon, whose recent book, Futurewise, deals with the debate on human cloning, described the South Korean team's breakthrough as "sensational".
But the announcement highlighted the urgent need to police developments in the field of cloning.
"Today's news is sensational," he said. "British scientists have constantly told us that human cloning was some distance away and for that reason there was no great urgency to introduce a global ban on the birth of human clones.
"However it seems to me that the first birth of human clones is only weeks away, as today's news has shown."
He called for an immediate moratorium on all human cloning research until a ban on the birth of human clones was in place and there had been proper international public debate on the realistic medical benefits of human cloning medical experiments.
"We urgently need a biotech summit looking at every aspect of the genetic revolution including human cloning," Dr Dixon said.
The South Korean team said that, using a method known as the "Honolulu technique", it cultivated four embryonic cells from a single cell implanted in a woman's ovum.
Researchers at the University of Hawaii said in July that they had used the technique to create more than 50 carbon-copy mice.
The method is also said to be more reliable than the technology used by Scotland's Roslin Institute to create Dolly the sheep in 1996.
The South Korean team was led by Dr Lee Bo-yeon, a professor at the Seoul fertility clinic, who said: "Our experiment marked the first time that the more reliable cloning technology has been applied to human cells and might make human cloning more feasible."
But the advance made by his team was a step away from what scientists in the United States have achieved in developing stem cells which can be implanted in a woman's womb for a human embryo.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin have reported success in growing stem cells in a dish using clumps of cells that were grown from fertilized eggs. Scientists from Johns Hopkins also grew stem cells from egg cells taken from aborted fetuses.
Dr Lee said: "The cloning of human embryos should be encouraged for scientific research to create replacement hearts and other organs. It will eventually help human beings."
Scientists say cultured stem cells could produce new heart cells, or new insulin-producing cells for the treatment of diabetes.
Dr Dixon said he was concerned about the level of secrecy which surrounded work on cloning.
"When Dolly was cloned there were seven months of silence between her birth and announcement to the world," he said.
"She had been created as an embryo many months before her birth and experiments were advanced before that."
He also highlighted the case of American scientist Dr Jose Cibelli, who only announced recently that three years ago he had cloned himself by combining one of his own cells with a cow's egg.
The clone was eventually destroyed before implantation.
"The fact is that when it comes to cloning, headlines are up to three years behind reality," Dr Dixon said.

Dr Harry Griffin of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh which produced Dolly the sheep cast doubt on the Korean team's claims.
"Firstly, we do not believe the Korean group has sufficient scientific evidence to back their claim of having cloned a human embryo," he said.
"Their experiment was stopped when the embryo was seen dividing into four cells. A fertilised egg goes through the first few cell divisions -- three in humans -- on "autopilot" and it is only after the eight cell stage that the nucleus of the cell takes control of further development of the embryo.
"By stopping the experiment where they did, the Korean researchers are unable to provide any evidence that the transferred nucleus had been successfully "reprogrammed".
"We are also surprised as to why Dr Lee Bo-yeon and his colleagues went ahead with this experiment at this particular time. There is little in news reports to suggest their work is part of a substantial programme of research and the South Korean government is apparently considering legislation to control research on cloning in humans."
He added the Roslin Institute had never done any research on cloning with human cells.

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