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Cloning around Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, November 18, 2007 Researchers aren't just monkeying around with cloning - they're aiming for medical breakthroughs or commercial applications. The latest: Oregon researchers harvest stem cells from fully formed, cloned monkey embryos - one step closer on the evolutionary chain to humans. The findings raise hopes that human tissues and organs may someday be cloned for transplants with no risk of rejection, but they intensify the ongoing ethical debate on cloning. 1952: Robert Briggs and Thomas King of Philadelphia, Pa., describe how they cloned frogs by replacing the nuclei of eggs with cells from tadpoles and adult intestinal tissue. 1973: The futuristic Woody Allen comedy "Sleeper" includes a subplot about efforts to clone a dead president. At one point, Allen absconds with the nose from which the leader is to be recreated, pointing a gun at it and threatening, "Don't take another step or the president gets it between the eyes." Other films to feature cloning include "The Boys from Brazil" (1978), "Multiplicity" (1996), "The Sixth Day" (2000), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and "The Island" (2005). 1978: Journalist David Rorvik claims in his book "In His Image: The Cloning of a Man" that scientists created a human clone from the DNA of a millionaire. A British court later rules the book a "fraud and a hoax." 1984: Chinese researchers clone a fish - the crucian carp - from cultured kidney cells. 1996: Researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland clone two lambs - Megan and Morag - from embryonic cells. This was a crucial step towards cloning an animal from an adult cell. 1997: Roslin researchers announce the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Named after entertainer Dolly Parton for reasons we won't get into, the sheep dies in 2003 - young for a sheep. 1997: President Clinton bans federal funding of human cloning research. 1998: Scientists at the University of Hawaii reveal the cloning of three generations of mice from the nuclei of adult cells. 1998: Japanese researchers report cloning eight calves using adult cells from slaughterhouse entrails. 1998: Scientists in New Zealand announce Elsie, a clone created from an adult cell from the last surviving Enderby Island cow. 2000: Pope John Paul II reiterates his 1997 condemnation of human cloning, saying, "Methods that fail to respect the dignity and value of the person must always be avoided." 2000: PPL Therapeutics in Scotland unveils a litter of five cloned piglets. 2002: Brigitte Boisselier, a college chemistry professor, Raelian bishop, and CEO of the sci-fi startup Clonaid, along with Rael, the founder of the Raelians, announces that Clonaid had successfully cloned a human being. Boisselier claims the mother delivered by Caesarean section somewhere outside the United States, and declares that both the mother and the little girl, Eve, are healthy. 2002: President Bush opposes human cloning, saying, "Life is a creation, not a commodity." 2004: Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and Clone sells a cloned cat for $50,000. "He is identical. His personality is the same," the pet owner says. But the company closes in 2006. 2005: "Never Let Me Go," a futuristic novel by Kazuo Ishiguro in which human clones are raised to provide donor organs, is named best novel of 2005 by Time magazine. 2006: South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk admits that he falsely claimed to have created the world's first human embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos. 2007: A bill that would ban human reproductive cloning fails in the U.S. House of Representatives. 2007: Only a week before the announcement of the cloning of monkey cells, the U.N. University's Institute of Advanced Studies issues a warning about human cloning. "Whichever path the international community chooses it will have to act soon," said A.H. Zakri, head of the institute. "Either to prevent reproductive cloning or to defend the human rights of cloned individuals." Rayilyn Brown Board Member AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn