Korean Claim Of Human Cloning Raises Urgent Issues
RTos 19.12.98 06:36
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By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The announcement by a team of South Korean
scientists that they have cloned a human cell makes even more
pressing the question of what, exactly, a clone is and when human
life begins, experts said Thursday.
Such issues will have to be addressed urgently, because
laboratories have shown they are capable of the technology, said
Neal First of the University of Wisconsin, who has created
cross-species clones of several animals using eggs from cows.
"I think at this moment Congress has to decide on the issue
of cloning," First said in a telephone interview.
None of the researchers who has succeeded in cloning cells or
even animals say they want to clone human beings. The idea is,
rather, to use cloning technology to grow human "stem
cells" that can differentiate into various kinds of tissue,
for use in treating diseases.
Other researchers are using cloning technology to help infertile
women, by using a younger woman's egg cell to boost an aging or
damaged egg cell.
First said he does not doubt the South Korean team did clone a
human cell -- which they let divide twice before stopping the
process.
The researchers, headed by Dr. Kim Seung-bo at Seoul's Kyunghee
University Hospital, have declined to give details about their
experiment.
They say they took an adult cell from a woman in her 30s, fused
the nucleus into another egg cell, and started the egg growing as
if it had been fertilized. They stopped the process once the egg
had divided into four cells.
One of the scientists who helped clone Dolly the sheep, the first
mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, said he doubted the
Kyunghee team had actually cloned a human.
But First said it was likely the South Korean team had managed to
at least get started.
"The fact that they went to four cells and they stopped it
doesn't tell us how far it would go," First said. "But
I think it says the technology that they used is probably capable
of doing something."
The Kyunghee researchers said they would not press ahead until
South Korea's legislators decided on legal and ethical questions
surrounding the cloning of humans.
Last month a U.S. team made a similar announcement. Jose Cibelli
and colleagues at Advanced Cell Technologies, a small,
Massachusetts biotech company, said they had created a
cross-species cell using a cow egg and one of Cibelli's cells,
but would wait for public reaction before proceeding.
First said this probably counted as cloning, even though the
Advanced Cell team did not implant the resulting embryo into a
womb to grow and said it stopped growing after a few weeks.
The top U.S. experts in cloning asked Congress earlier this month
to allow such experiments to go ahead. U.S. laws currently forbid
federal funding of experiments involving human embryos.
The scientists, including First, say government funding is vital
because of the promise stem cells hold for treating diseases
ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's.
The big question is, what is an embryo? "That is not defined
very well," First said. "A lot of people would consider
the product of fertilization to be an embryo."
But until there are about eight cells, First says, a growing
fertilized egg is just running off the material inside the egg
cell, and not using the nucleus, which contains nearly all the
DNA genetic information.
President Clinton has asked the National Biotechnology Advisory
Commission to consider these issues. They will meet next month.
Meantime, experiments continue. First says his team is working to
make cross-species clones of monkeys, mice and other animals
using cow eggs.