‘Fringe’ scientists want to clone human embryos…
Find the full article here…
‘Dolly’ Scientists May Clone Human Embryos
Ian Wilmut, who led the team which created Dolly, said it would be “immoral” not to use therapeutic cloning for stem cell research, which many scientists believe could help treat disorders such as motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
…
“Now I think we would all agree that humans at any stage of their life deserve respect,” Wilmut added. “But … 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.”
Let’s take a look back at ‘Dolly’ the cloned sheep in this BreakPoint article from March 19, 2003…
Goodbye Dolly - Putting a Cloned Sheep to Sleep
Dolly’s experimenters used 277 cloned embryos to produce one sheep, meaning 276 failed. Many of those attempts produced deformed fetuses that died in the womb. Some were born dead. Others were born alive, twice their normal size, and died a few days after birth.
Even Dolly, the “successful” clone, showed premature aging by age three. Last year she was diagnosed with arthritis. Then she developed a virus-induced lung disease severe enough to justify “putting her out of her misery” on Valentine’s Day.
…
Dolly’s birth was one of the biggest news stories of the nineties. Scientists made extravagant promises about medical and technological advances. Well, Dolly’s embarrassingly premature death received little attention, precisely because it exposes the horrors of cloning.
Tags: News and Media
