New Orleans.Net
From hard science to harder ethics, from sheep to people,
cloning experts gather
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
The Associated Press
8/7/01 12:54 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Since the day in 1997 that scientists in
Scotland announced the successful cloning of a sheep named
Dolly, the fear of -- or hope for -- human cloning has been
a major focus of discussion, and of legislation in many countries
banning the practice.

Citing widespread confusion about human cloning and the complex
ethical issues it raises, the National Academy of Sciences is
bringing an international panel of scientists together Tuesday for
a discussion of the technology and where it may be heading.

Meanwhile, debate swirls around the potential for human cloning.
At least three researchers scheduled to attend the meeting have
said they plan human cloning experiments.

Dr. Severino Antinori of Rome drew a fresh rebuke from Italian
medical authorities on Monday, who warned that he risked losing
his right to practice in Italy because of his plans to clone humans.

Antinori, who has repeatedly discussed plans to begin human
cloning this year, told La Stampa newspaper that 1,300 couples in
America, mostly in Kentucky, and 200 in Italy are candidates for
his research -- and that he plans to start cloning embryos in
November.

"Ours will be an experiment of therapeutic cloning for those
couples who have no hope of having children," La Stampa quoted
Antinori as saying. Because cloning would be illegal in Italy, he
has said he would do the work in an unnamed Mediterranean
country.

Joining Antinori at the session are researchers Panayiotis Zavos
and Brigette Boisselier.

Zavos, who runs a fertility clinic in Lexington, Ky., and heads
an organization called The Andrology Institute, also has said he
wants to begin cloning a human by the end of this year.

The Food and Drug Administration has prohibited human cloning
in the United States, however.

Boisselier, in June, accepted an agreement with the FDA promising
not to do human cloning experiments without agency
approval. The agreement was signed after the FDA inspected her lab.
The agency declined to say where it was located.

On Sunday, Mark Hunt, a West Virginia lawyer, said he had spent
less than $500,000 to set up a lab for Boisselier in Nitro, W.Va.,
but now has changed his mind about asking her to clone his late
son.

Boisselier is scientific director of Clonaid, which advertises cloning
services on its Web site for fees starting at $200,000. It was founded
in 1997 by a French race car driver who changed his name to Rael
and started the Raelian Movement, which claims that
life on Earth was created by extraterrestrial scientists.

Among the debates over cloning is the issue of creating embryos
to harvest stem cells for use in medical research.

The House of Representatives has voted to ban human cloning for
any purpose. President Bush is contemplating whether to allow use
of government funds in embryonic stem cell research, including such
research that does not involve cloning.

On the other hand, in England, Parliament voted in January to permit
stem cell research on human embryos and also made Britain
the first nation to specifically allow cloning to create embryos
for that purpose.

Stem cells are the master cells found in early stage embryos.
They evolve into all the different tissues of the body and doctors
hope to treat many diseases by directing the cells to develop
into needed implants.

Cloning is reproducing without mating a male sperm and female
egg.

In sexual reproduction, the offspring get half its genes from
each parent. In cloning, the embryo gets all genes from one
individual.

In Dolly's case, for example, all of her genes came from a 6-year-old
adult ewe. Researchers removed an egg from one ewe and
took out the nucleus, the master control center that includes the
genes.

From the 6-year-old ewe, the researchers then took a mature
udder cell and removed the nucleus, including the genes. The
nucleus was put into the denucleated egg from the first ewe. Lab
manipulation caused the egg and transplanted nucleus to develop
into an embryo.

This was then placed into the uterus of a third ewe, which later
gave birth to Dolly, who had all the same genes as the 6-year-old,
thus becoming a clone of that sheep.

However, she wasn't an instant carbon copy. To begin with,
the "parent" sheep was six years older and they were raised
in different environments.

------
On the Net:
National Academy of Sciences:
http://www.nas.edu/

SOURCE: New Orleans / Associated Press
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?a0411_BC_Cloning&&news&newsflash-washington

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