Cloning advance could lead to designer babies

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:59:59 -0400

A new cloning method that relies on skin cells is far more efficient and easier to use than the antiquated methods employed to create Dolly the sheep. And some critics of the science are concerned that the bar may be lowered so far that researchers will be tempted to use the technology to begin to routinely offer designer babies--a realm once exclusively the preserve of science fiction writers. In the new approach, scientists injected skin cells into an early-stage embryo created through in vitro fertilization. The process produced both partial and full clones and can be replicated without the severe defects that afflicted many earlier cloned animals.

"It's unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today," Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology, told The Independent. "Cloning isn't here now, but with this new technique we have the technology that can actually produce a child. If this was applied to humans it would be enormously important and troublesome."

- read the report in The Independent

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