Cloning

A paper published this week by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a reproductive biology specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton, and his colleagues is sure to rekindle that debate. Mitalipov and his team have finally created patient-specific ESCs through cloning, and they are keen to prove that the technology is worth pursuing....

Mitalipov and his group began work on their new study last September, using eggs from young donors recruited through a university advertising campaign. In December, after some false starts, cells from four cloned embryos that Mitalipov had engineered began to grow. “It looks like colonies, it looks like colonies,” he kept thinking. Masahito Tachibana, a fertility specialist from Sendai, Japan, who is finishing a 5-year stint in Mitalipov’s laboratory, nervously sectioned the 1-millimetre-wide clumps of cells and transferred them to new culture plates, where they continued to grow — evidence of success. Mitalipov cancelled his holiday plans. “I was happy to spend Christmas culturing cells,” he says. “My family understood.”

Still, Daley and most other stem-cell researchers have shifted to another method for creating genetically matched, patient-specific cell lines: reprogramming adult cells to an embryonic state to produce induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. First reported in 2006, the technique does not involve eggs, cloning or destruction of embryos. “Honestly, the most surprising thing [about this paper] is that somebody is still doing human [SCNT] in the era of iPS cells,” says Miodrag Stojkovic, who studies iPS cells for regenerative medicine and runs a fertility clinic in Leskovac, Serbia.

"Anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies."

The new research, by a team led by the biologist Jonathan L. Tilly, depends on a special protein found to mark the surface of reproductive cells like eggs and sperm. Using a cell-sorting machine that can separate out the marked cells, the team obtained reproductive cells from mouse ovaries and showed that the cells would generate viable egg cells that could be fertilized and produce embryos.

They then applied the same method to human ovaries donated by women at the Saitama Medical Center in Japan who were undergoing sex reassignment because of a gender identity disorder. As with the mice, the team was able to retrieve reproductive cells that produced immature egg cells when grown in the laboratory. The egg cells, when injected into mice, generated follicles, the ovarian structure in which eggs are formed, as well as mature eggs, some of which had a single set of chromosomes, a signature of eggs and sperm. The results were published online Sunday by the journal Nature Medicine.

Dr. Tilly and colleagues wrote that their work opens up “a new field in human reproductive biology that was inconceivable less than 10 years ago,” and that access to the new cells will make possible novel forms of fertility preservation.

 This discovery is being hailed as a game-changer for the fertility industry where eggs are a hot commodity.  The specter of a greater supply has everyone talking.

But I want to talk about a few realities....

Continue reading at LifeNews

It is becoming increasingly clear that medical professionals who wish to continue in the Hippocratic tradition will face increasing pressure to yield their consciences to the desires of patients and the reigning moral cultural paradigm.

Progressives likely cheer erosions of conscience protections for health care providers because emergency contraception, abortion and assisted suicide are issues they champion.  But I want to look farther into the future to see how a lack of conscience clauses will affect the medical profession.

Photograph: Getty

"My decision to clone myself should not be the government's business, or Cardinal O'Conner's, anymore than a woman's decision to have an abortion is.  Cloning is highly significant.  Its part of the reproductive rights of every human being."     --Randy Wicher, cloning activist

diy.despair.com

Human Oocyte, a hot commodity for cloning researchers

There is a dirty little secret behind cloning to obtain stem cells that no supporter ever wants to talk about.  If they do even acknowledge the secret it is quickly dismissed as a non-issue.  In reality, this secret is a rallying cry against cloning research for BOTH sides of the embryonic stem cell debates.  Which is probably exactly why supporters of therapeutic cloning (cloning to produce stem cells) refuse to bring it to light.

The demand for women’s eggs for research could soar alarmingly following news of a cloning technique that uses human oocytes to reprogram somatic cells to a state of pluripotency (S. Noggle et al. Nature 478, 70–75; 2011).

The mean number of eggs given by each woman during the study was 16.9, with one donating 26 eggs. This is more than many fertility doctors would consider optimal and increases the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. The researchers do not say that they halted hormone treatment in cases of over-response, although they did stop it in under-responsive women.

Noggle et al. rightly anticipated concerns that payment for eggs could encourage financially disadvantaged women to take risks they might otherwise avoid. But US$8,000, the amount paid by Noggle and colleagues, would be a temptation even to the well-off in these difficult economic times.

Some argue that women should evaluate for themselves the risks and benefits of providing eggs for research. But informed consent depends on provision of accurate information. Even after years of egg harvesting for fertility treatment, the risks to women — especially from some of the drugs and hormones used — remain undercharacterized and poorly assessed, with inadequate follow-up and data collection.

Marcy Darnovsky, Center for Genetics and Society, Berkeley, California, USA.
Susan Berke Fogel, Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, Van Nuys, California, USA.
Judy Norsigian, Our Bodies Ourselves, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Cloning embryos to get patient-specific embryonic stem cells (stem cells genetically identical to the patient) has been a dismal failure.  In the meantime researchers have put young women's reproductive health and even their lives at risk to retrieve the hundreds of human eggs need for even one attempt at cloning a human embryo.  Even Hwang lied about how many eggs it took in his attempts at cloning.  He claimed he improved the process and needed less eggs. In reality, Hwang blew through many as 2,000 eggs from as many as 120 women in his failed attempt to become the first to clone a human embryo.  Some of those eggs came from 2 junior researchers in Hwang's own lab.  

Professor Park Se-pill at Jeju National University is striving to clone human embryonic stem cells by 2015, the much-touted breakthrough that no scientists have ever achieved.

The embryologist plans to start cloning human embryos and establishing stem cell batches from them beginning next year.

“Recently, the government approved Cheju National University as eligible to conduct human embryonic studies. We now need to get separate okays for specific research projects,” Park said.

“We will be able to start the work on human embryonic stem cells next year with the aim of finishing them by 2015. It will be tough as nobody has achieved it yet but we will do our best.”

What Park is trying to do is exactly the same as what Hwang Woo-suk, a former professor at Seoul National University, claimed to have done — though the purported feat later proved to be false.

Hwang stole the spotlight in the mid 2000s when two papers on the human embryonic stem cells were published as cover-story articles by the U.S. journal Science.

The exploits were expected to bring possible treatments for degenerative diseases such as diabetes but his work was found to be based on fabricated data and his team actually did not extract stem cells from the cloned human embryos.

“In fact, things are much difficult now compared to when Hwang carried out his research because we are now not allowed to use fresh eggs to duplicate embryos,” Park said.

“Instead, we have to depend on frozen eggs so that the success rate will be very low as amply demonstrated in animal experiments. We need to fix this problem.”

"Anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies." 

U.S. scientists for the first time have used a cloning technique to get tailor-made embryonic stem cells to grow in unfertilized human egg cells, a landmark finding and a potential new flashpoint for opponents of stem cell research.

The embryonic stem cells extracted from these genetically disabled embryos also had 69 chromosomes.  So unless the patient cloned also had triploidy, there is no way these cells are "tailor-made."  They instead have half of another person's genome in them as well.  How is that "patient-specific?"

Scientists reported Wednesday that for the first time they used cloning techniques to coax human eggs to generate embryonic stem cells containing the genes of specific patients.

The step, published in the journal Nature, marks a long-sought, potentially pivotal advance toward the goal of creating genetically matched embryonic stem cells that could be used to treat many major diseases.

The cells, however, contained an extra set of gene-carrying chromosomes — one set of 23 chromosomes from the egg and the usual two sets of 46 chromosomes from the diabetics who provided their genes. That makes them useless for treating anyone.

Discussing cloning in animals is easy.  No one seems to have a problem accurately describing the process of cloning, somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT, for a sheep or a cow.  (SCNT is the process used to create Dolly the sheep.  In SCNT, the nucleus of an egg is removed.  The egg's nucleus is replaced with a nucleus of a somatic cell, like a skin cell, from an adult organism.  The egg with a new set of DNA is zapped into thinking it has been fertilized and a cloned embryo is formed.)  In fact, I have never seen a cloning account for an animal that wasn't accurate.  For example, this description by Popular Science on plans to use SCNT with eggs from spayed domestic cats to clone the endangered Scottish wildcat.  This account of SCNT clearly states that it would produce a wildcat embryo:

It would work by developing the immature spayed-egg cells in vitro, to make them suitable for cloning. Then the eggs would be used to produce an embryo that contains the genetic material of the donor wildcat. This embryo would be transplanted in a surrogate cat.

For the rest of the animal kingdom, SCNT is a no-brainer.  Egg + somatic cell nucleus = cloned embryo.  But no so for humans.  In humans, many people argue that SCNT is an entirely different process.  In humans, it does not create a cloned embryo like in animals.  Instead SCNT in humans only makes "a clump of cells."  For example, in Minnesota Medicine, an M.D. and a Ph.D. do a real snow job.  They write this about SCNT:

SCNT is a laboratory technique that involves the transfer of a cell nucleus from a somatic cell into an enucleated egg (one from which the nucleus has been removed). The technique produces a formless group of cells that is smaller than the cross-section of a human hair.

So SCNT in animals: egg + somatic nucleus = cloned embryo.  Got it.  But for humans: egg + somatic nucleus = formless group of cells that is smaller than the cross-section of a human hair.  Don't got it.

If you think this is a curious distinction then you are right.  Why is it that no one has a problem accurately describing the cloning of animals but when it comes to humans, proper scientific terminology gets dropped like a greased watermelon?  Because instinctively all of us know that humans are different: not biologically different, but morally different.  We have an inherent dignity simply because we are human.  This inherent dignity is evidenced by ubiquitous laws against the taking of innocent human life.  To make the cloning of human embryos and their destruction palatable to the masses, scientists, advocates and politicians alike have to lie about the process and insist that, in humans, SCNT does not, in fact, make a cloned embryo as it does with our animals friends. Instead SCNT in humans makes only "a formless group of cells" totally devoid of any humanity at all. 

In the cloning advocates eyes, pretending that SCNT doesn't make cloned embryos means problem solved.  Create and destroy human life by pretending no human life is created and destroyed.  Except we know they are being disingenuous.  And there are a handful of scientists who are brave enough to say so as well.  Like James Thomson, embryonic stem cell pioneer, who said the following when asked if SCNT only could make cells and not babies:

See, you’re trying to define it away, and it doesn’t work. If you create an embryo by nuclear transfer, and you give it to somebody who didn’t know where it came from, there would be no test you could do on that embryo to say where it came from. It is what it is.

It’s true that they have a much lower probability of giving rise to a child. … But by any reasonable definition, at least at some frequency, you’re creating an embryo. If you try to define it away, you’re being disingenuous.

The paradox is astounding.  The same people who say that SCNT does not created embryos in humans would likely also say that humans are just animals.  Then why doesn't the animal description of SCNT apply to humans?  Maybe because they also know, but will not admit, that cloning human embryos is morally problematic.  It is what cloning advocates don't say about SCNT in humans that speaks the loudest.

From LifeNews.com:

Gov. Mark Dayton has vetoed legislation that would have prevented the cloning of human embryos in Minnesota, and the funding of such experiments. Both pro-life measures were strongly supported by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the statewide pro-life group.

“MCCL was hopeful that Gov. Dayton would act to ban the senseless cloning of human beings,” the organization’s director Scott Fischbach said. “Human dignity demands that life be respected and protected, not treated as mere raw material in laboratories.”

Dayton’s vetoes today mean that the cloning of human embryos (but not their destruction) remains legal in Minnesota.

“MCCL and the state’s large majority who oppose human cloning will continue to work to establish a ban on all forms of human cloning,” Fischbach said. “Our hope is that Gov. Dayton will listen to the people and their elected officials, who want to prevent this unethical treatment of human life in our state.”

Sen. Michelle Fischbach, R-Paynesville, and Rep. Bob Dettmer, R-Forest Lake, sponsored the legislation to ban human cloning and lawmakers ultimately included it in the Health and Human Services omnibus bill. The language of the bill banned human cloning for any purpose.

Many advocates and scientists insist that therapeutic cloning (SCNT) is critical to stem cell research.  They claim that cloning embryos and harvesting their stem cells will eventually save lives.  They never mention the hundreds of human eggs that are needed for one successful attempt at SCNT.  They certainly never mention what women have to go through to "donate" those eggs.  Here is a chilling account from The Center for Bioethics and Culture of a woman and who "donated" her eggs to be used in embryonic stem cell research:

Shavonne: I took a drug called Follistim to super ovulate me. The retrieval went fine, but not too long after that my stomach started to swell, and every time I leaned over I could feel my ovaries “plop.” I went to see the doctor, and he told me I had OHSS, and he then said, “We see girls like you all the time.” I looked 4 months pregnant. They told me to go home and eat a lot of protein. My mother was staying with me at the time, and one night my stomach was so swollen and I could hardly breathe. My mother said, “That’s enough,” and took me to the emergency room. The nurse stuck a needle in my stomach, and it was a loud pop I could feel, like a balloon was popped. She stuck a bag on the end of the needle to drain the fluid, and the bag filled with 2 quarts in about 5 minutes. She had to quickly put another bag on and some of the fluid spilled on the floor. She filled the next bag too—in all, 4 quarts were drained out of my stomach. I stayed in the hospital for 2 1/2 more days while they drained more fluid. I had a lot of pain in my abdomen. The staff at the hospital would shake their head at me and took pity on me, because I was an egg donor and they said they saw this a lot.

Lahl: How are things for you now and how is your health?

Shavonne: It took a year and a half to clear up the medical bills. My menstrual cycles are few and far between. I was pregnant in 2008, but I lost the baby. I hope to have children some day, and every time I do have a period, I get really excited because I rarely have them anymore.

So just remember every time someone advocates for SCNT as a precursor to embryonic stem cell research, they are advocating that women undergo this same procedure, with these same risks, to get the enormous amount of eggs needed.  It is totally unnecessary since scientists already have a way to reprogram adult cells back to an embryonic-like state without using SCNT.  Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) create patient specific embryonic-like stem cells (just like they claim SCNT does,) but without the eggs and without cloning embryos.

A vote to ban SCNT in humans is a vote to protect women from what happen to Shavonne.  I am amazed that a country like the United States that is so into protecting woman's reproductive health is so silent on the risks that cloning research poses to young woman.  But then again nothing makes any sense in the Clone Wars.

This misdirection regarding somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), also known as cloning, takes the cake.  An M.D. and a Ph.D. do a real snow job.  In Minnesota Medicine they write this about SCNT:

SCNT is a laboratory technique that involves the transfer of a cell nucleus from a somatic cell into an enucleated egg (one from which the nucleus has been removed). The technique produces a formless group of cells that is smaller than the cross-section of a human hair. The bill’s supporters argue that SCNT could lead to the creation of a baby. This is not feasible because cells created through SCNT cannot survive for long in culture (they survive only long enough for extraction of their inner mass, from which a new cell line can be derived).

Seriously?  Since when is "formless group of cells smaller than the cross-section of a human hair" a suitable scientific substitute for the term  "embryo."  Try using that description in a real scientific journal article.  As for the assertion that it is not "feasible" that SCNT can lead to the creation of a baby, I guess they are not aware that SCNT has been used to clone Dolly the sheep as well as other full grown adult mammals like cows, pigs and dogs.  But of course the debates on cloning is the only time humans aren't like any other animal.  Are these guys really willing to say that SCNT is cloning in animals but not in humans?!  Unbelievable.

I prefer these more scientifically accurate descriptions of SCNT from the American Medical Association:

Alternatively, stem cells have also been obtained from embryos generated from unfertilized eggs using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Initially, SCNT technology was designed to produce embryos from which immunologically compatible stem cells could be derived for use in treating human diseases (therapeutic cloning). However, recent advances in the technology have prompted concerns about embryos formed by SCNT being misused for generating human clones (reproductive cloning).

Or the National Academy of Sciences:

The method used to initiate the reproductive cloning procedure is called nuclear transplantation, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). It involves replacing the chromosomes of a human egg with the nucleus of a body (somatic) cell from a developed human. In reproductive cloning, the egg is then stimulated to undergo the first few divisions to become an aggregate of 64 to 200 cells called a blastocyst. The blastocyst is a preimplantation embryo that contains some cells with the potential to give rise to a fetus and other cells that help to make the placenta. If the blastocyst is placed in a uterus, it can implant and form a fetus. If the blastocyst is instead maintained in the laboratory, cells can be extracted from it and grown on their own.

It seems this MD and PhD are guilty of exactly what James Thomson, embryonic stem cell pioneer, accurately calls "being disingenuous" in this Q and A at MSNBC.  They are trying to define away that fact that SCNT in humans creates a cloned human embryo:

Q: The people who use nuclear transfer generally say that the technique is optimized for producing the stem cells rather than making babies. They would not want to equate this with the process that produces embryos that were fit for implantation, and they’d argue that they’re using the reproductive process differently …

A: See, you’re trying to define it away, and it doesn’t work. If you create an embryo by nuclear transfer, and you give it to somebody who didn’t know where it came from, there would be no test you could do on that embryo to say where it came from. It is what it is.

It’s true that they have a much lower probability of giving rise to a child. … But by any reasonable definition, at least at some frequency, you’re creating an embryo. If you try to define it away, you’re being disingenuous.

And I don't mean that the Stars Wars movies are out on Blu Ray.  Like a bad case of head lice, just when you think the debates about human cloning are over, they come back.  And with them come piles of misinformation from the media on the science and ethics surrounding human cloning research.  Minnesota has proposed a true ban on human cloning and like magic every media outlet anywhere near a lake has decided it is their job to obfuscate the issue and confuse the public.  So while I really do not want to rehash the cloning issue, I think it is time for a refresher on what cloning is, what it isn't and why we need to care.  Stick with me.  I will try to make this as painless as possible!

The technical term for cloning is somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT.  SCNT is the process used to clone Dolly the sheep.  SCNT creates a cloned embryo from an egg and an adult cell like a skin cell.  (More on SCNT.)  Contrary to popular belief human cloning is not banned in the United States.  In fact researchers in most states can clone human embryos with SCNT all day long. With H.F. 998 The Human Cloning Prohibition Act, the Minnesota legislature is trying to ban all SCNT in humans.  Opponents insist that H.F.998 will halt stem cell research.

The truth is that cloning research is independent of stem cell research, even the embryonic kind.  Researchers can clone human embryos with no intention of using them for harvesting stem cells.  Embryonic stem cell research can proceed just fine with embryos that were not made with cloning.  Cloning is making genetically identical human embryos and stem cell research is research on stem cells.  Scientifically speaking they have little to do with each other. 

Linking human cloning with embryonic stem cell research is a red herring used to make sure a true ban on human cloning never makes it into law. Here is the ruse.  Scientists say that to make embryonic stem cells that are genetically identical to the patient, the have to clone the patient with SCNT and harvest the stem cells from the cloned embryo. Using SCNT, they can create patient specific stem cells that the patient will not reject because they are genetically identical to the patient.  (The genetically identical part is not actually true.  A clone will always have genetic material leftover from the woman who donated the egg.)  Researchers insist that a ban on SCNT in humans will hinder stem cell research. 

Cue the media that intentionally misrepresents the cloning process and screams that a ban on human cloning will make stem cell research a felony.  Reporters have been playing the stem cell research card for years.  They report that SCNT is only cloning if the cloned embryo finds it way into a uterus.  Politicians and advocates play along.  They all lie and tell the public that SCNT is only cloning if a cloned baby results.  In other words, cloning is only cloning if used in reproduction.  If a cloned embryo is made with SCNT and then destroyed in research then magically it isn't cloning anymore.  Instead, SCNT is just stem cell research that will cure you, your mother, your second cousin and your dog.  They insist that a ban on SCNT will destroy the pantheon of stem cell cures before it is ever built and anyone who says otherwise is a close-minded, religious idiot with no grasp of science whatsoever.  Even the National Catholic Reporter got it wrong.

What they will never tell you is the truth.  SCNT is the act of cloning.  SCNT creates a cloned embryo irregardless of the fate of that clone.  Whether that cloned embryo is ripped apart for the stem cells inside or is implanted into a uterus, it was still cloned.  The only difference between so-called therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning is where the clone ends up.  The cloning part is the same.  (More on reproductive versus therapeutic cloning.)   A true ban on human cloning bans all SCNT in humans.

They will never mention that SCNT takes eggs, lots and lots of human eggs.  To get these eggs, young women's health, fertility and sometimes even their lives are put at risk.  So far, it has taken hundreds of eggs for just one successful attempt at SCNT.  Which means dozens of women had to donate for just one SCNT embryo.  Dr. Woo-Suk Hwang, the disgraced South Korean researcher, forced his own female researchers to donate their eggs for his research because they couldn't get enough from the local IVF clinic.

They will also not tell you that after years of trying, cloning human embryos is tough and extracting a viable stem cell line form a cloned embryo is even tougher.  To my knowledge it has yet to be accomplished.  So no one ever been close to being treated with embryonic stem cells from a cloned embryo.  Some scientists wonder if embryonic stem cells, cloned or otherwise, will ever be safe enough to treat patients because tumors have been reported in animal trial after animal trial.  After years of delays over safety concerns, the very first embryonic stem cell trial is underway.  It is only for a handful of patients and it is only to test the safety of the embryonic stem cells.  All this is for stem cells from an embryo created the old-fashioned way with egg and sperm.  I cannot imagine the delays for human trials with stem cells from a cloned embryo. 

But the facts will not deter the bleeding hearts that cry that without cloning the cures will never come.  They point to other, more enlightened countries, that are not as backward as we are with our archaic cloning and stem cell rules.  Actually, many of those enlightened countries have banned SCNT in humans as recommended by the United Nations.  Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, France and many many others, prohibit all SCNT in humans even for research.  Whether or not these countries are farther ahead in stem cell treatments than the US is debatable, but if they are it is because they do not waste their time and money on research that has not, and likely will never, treat a single patient.  They are putting their efforts into adult stem cell research that has proven effective, while we are still staring at our navels and arguing over whether a cloned embryo is still an embryo.

The biggest fact they will never tell you is that there is a viable alternative to cloning for patient specific stem cells.  Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells have been created from all kinds of adult cells.  iPS cells are derived from adult cells that have been reprogrammed back to an embryonic state.  iPS cell behave like embryonic stem cells and they are a genetic match to the patient because they came from the patient, not from a clone (that has residual DNA from the woman who donated the egg.) iPS cells mean patient-specific stem cells, a true genetic match, no eggs, no embryos created or destroyed, no cloning required.

Even after all of the facts, cloning zealots still push their agenda.  The comments on this Minnesota Independent article are both aggravating and discouraging. 

The only thing that puts a smirk in my snerk, is that I realize something they don't.  SCNT is the same process used to clone cows.  You know the cows that everyone fears.  The cows whose milk no one wants to drink.  I know that the people who push for SCNT in humans are the very same who are afraid to drink milk from a cloned cow.  So while they complain about the horrors and health risks of milk and meat from cloned cows, they are clamoring to inject themselves with stem cells from a cloned embryo.  Their dead clone to be exact.  Go figure.  Like most things in the Clone Wars, it makes absolutely no sense.

Why should we care about some piece of legislation in Minnesota?  Because cloning is always wrong even if it done for a proposed good. It creates, manipulates and destroys human life.  And anyone who believes that the cloning will end in the dish is naive.  Cloning for research will lead to cloning for babies.  According to some experts it is an inevitability.  All SCNT in humans needs to be banned.  If Minnesota succeeds where other states and the US Congress has failed, it will be a huge triumph for humanity. 

In Minnesota there is legislation proposed that actually does what it says it is going to do: ban cloning in humans.  Why is this remarkable?  Because most bans on human cloning do nothing of the sort.

I have always said, "Beware of legislation that says it bans human cloning!"  It is not that I don't want human cloning banned.  I do.  And so should you.  It is just that most legislation that says it bans human cloning, doesn't actually ban human cloning, it redefines it.  Somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT is the scientific name for cloning.  If you read the fine print of many a law that says it bans human cloning often SCNT in humans is NOT banned.  SCNT could be used to create as many cloned human embryos as researchers want.  What is banned is just the implantation of those cloned embryos into a womb.  Confused?  You should be.  See the slight of hand is subtle but important.  Here is a visual.  The first diagram is of the actual cloning or SCNT process that creates cloned embryos:  (For a more detailed explanation of SCNT, click here)

This next visual is of what they can DO with a cloned embryo AFTER the cloning is complete:

See most bills only ban that very last arrow leading to the cloned baby. They leave the rest of the cloning process legal so researchers can clone human embryos all day long to use for harvesting stem cells.

The legislation in Minnesota is a TRUE ban on human cloning.  It bans all SCNT in humans.  H.F. 998 The Human Cloning Prohibition Act states that human cloning is ANY SCNT in humans:

"Human cloning" means human asexual reproduction accomplished by introducing nuclear material from one or more human somatic cells into a fertilized or unfertilized oocyte whose nuclear material has been removed or inactivated so as to produce a living organism at any stage of development that is genetically virtually identical to an existing or previously existing human organism.

"Somatic cell" means a diploid cell, having a complete set of chromosomes, obtained or derived from a living or deceased human body at any stage of development.

Prohibition on cloning. It is unlawful for any person or entity, public
1.18or private, to knowingly:
1) perform or attempt to perform human cloning;
(2) participate in an attempt to perform human cloning;
(3) ship or receive for any purpose an embryo produced by human cloning or any
product derived from such an embryo; and
(4) ship or receive, in whole or in part, any oocyte, embryo, fetus, or human somatic cell, for the purpose of human cloning.

Kudos to law makers in Minnesota.  If you live in the Land of 10,000 Lakes you should call you representative and tell them that you support H.R. 998.  If you do not live near so many lakes, you need to read the text of any state legislation that says it bans human cloning carefully.  If it doesn't ban all SCNT in humans and just says it bans the implantation of a product of SCNT, then take a pass and push your legislators to come up with a real ban on human cloning.

AgResearch is a state-owned research agency in New Zealand.  Because of the death toll in their cloned livestock they have ceased researching the cloning of animals.  From www.stuff.co.nz:

Applied biotechnologies general manager Jimmy Suttie said that after 13 years of studying how to prevent abnormalities forming in cloned animals, AgResearch had ended its cloning research.

"The decision was made, enough is enough."

Only about 10 per cent of cloned animals survived through the trials, with the main problems being spontaneous abortions and hydrops – where a cow's uterus filled up with water, leading to the mother being euthanised as well.

Animal Ethics Committee reports from Ruakura show that 16 foetuses or calves from mid gestation onwards either spontaneously aborted or died in the neonatal period last year.

Another 10 foetuses or calves were euthanised, as were 14 cows during last year's cloning trials.

This cloning process, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) that led to spontaneous abortions, abnormalities and death in animals is the very same process that researchers in the U.S. claim will allow them to make patient-specific stem cells to treat all kinds of ailments in humans.  Yes, the very same one.  Missouri enshrined somatic cell nuclear transfer into its state constitution with Amendment 2 (read section 6 part 2) and California tax-payers voted to fund SCNT research to the tune of $3 billion with Proposition 71.

So I wonder how the very same process that causes a halt in research with animal models because of abnormalities and death, could continue to be proposed as a way to treat humans.  I doubt if cloning research is really about the cures at all...

Sometimes I marvel at the lengths humans go to delude ourselves.  For years I have pointed out one very unusual phenomenon regarding cloning.  All over the world, consuming products from cloned animals or their offspring is bad, while creating human clones for stem cells to inject into human patients is good.  Cloned animals and cloned humans are both made with the process somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT.  Both are genetically modified organisms, but eating cloned animal products is considered "yucky" while the idea of injecting cloned human cells directly into our bodies is "laudable."  I just do not get it.

Now I am not advocating eating cloned animal products, just pointing out the strange love-hate relationship we have with cloning.  But, as I have said before, if it came down to drinking milk from a cloned cow or injecting myself with cells from a dead cloned embryo, I say, "Please pass the Oreos."

Britain is particularly puzzling.  This New York Times article points out the Brits uneasiness with cloned animals or their offspring getting into the food supply, meanwhile they are funding the creation of cloned human-animal hybrids with the intent to create stem cells. From the NYT:

ALBRIGHTON, England — Many Europeans recoil at the very idea of cloning animals. But a handful of breeders in Switzerland, Britain and possibly other countries have imported semen and embryos from cloned animals or their progeny from the United States, seeking to create more consistently plump and productive livestock.

And although no vendor has publicly acknowledged it, meat or dairy products originating from such techniques are believed to be already on supermarket shelves.

The amounts are no doubt small, and the sale appears to be legal. But the development is noteworthy on a continent that has long objected to genetically modified crops and where many people look at animal cloning as potentially dangerous and cruel — even immoral.

So animal cloning is considered immoral if it is for food supply, but making cloned animal-human hybrids for stem cell research is not.  From The Guardian in 2008:

First British human-animal hybrid embryos created by scientists

· Breakthrough could pave way for stem cell supply
· Move will aid research into untreatable conditions

Britian's first human-animal hybrid embryos have been created, forming a crucial first step, scientists believe, towards a supply of stem cells that could be used to investigate debilitating and so far untreatable conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease.

Lyle Armstrong, who led the work, gained permission in January from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to create the embryos, known as "cytoplasmic hybrids".

His team at Newcastle University produced the embryos by inserting human DNA from a skin cell into a hollowed-out cow egg. An electric shock then induced the hybrid embryo to grow. The embryo, 99.9% human and 0.1% other animal, grew for three days, until it had 32 cells.

Eventually, scientists hope to grow such embryos for six days, and then extract stem cells from them. The researchers insisted the embryos would never be implanted into a woman and that the only reason they used cow eggs was due to the scarcity of human eggs.

And while stem cells from human-cow hybrid embryos will probably never be injected into a human patient, I am wondering where is the outcry? 

There is none and there will not be. Why? Because in our upside down society, cloning for food is bad but cloning to live forever is good. 

I expect the secular media to get it wrong.  I expect them to relabel embryonic stem cells "early" stem cells to draw attention away from the fact that they come from embryos.  I expect the secular media to insist that the product of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is not a cloned human embryo, just some ball of cells that can be harvested for any reason.  I do not expect such slight of hand from a publication calling themselves Catholic.

Bill Tammeus, at the National Catholic Reporter says It's easy to be mislead on stem cell research.  He is right, but he is the one doing the misleading.  He insists that the product of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) also known as cloning is NOT a cloned human embryo, just a "small cluster of stem cells."  The American Medical Association disagrees:

"Alternatively, stem cells have also been obtained from embryos generated from unfertilized eggs using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Initially, SCNT technology was designed to produce embryos from which immunologically compatible stem cells could be derived for use in treating human diseases (therapeutic cloning). However, recent advances in the technology have prompted concerns about embryos formed by SCNT being misused for generating human clones (reproductive cloning)."

See many are concerned that SCNT will lead to reproductive cloning because it does in fact create a human embryo.  If SCNT, the same technique that created Dolly, makes cloned sheep embryos, then it sure as sh** makes human embryos when used with human eggs and human somatic cells.  (Sorry I am really angry!)

The National Academy of Sciences also refers to the product of SCNT as a blastocyst, which is an early embryo, that could grow into a fetus if placed in a uterus:

“The method used to initiate the reproductive cloning procedure is called nuclear transplantation, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). It involves replacing the chromosomes of a human egg with the nucleus of a body (somatic) cell from a developed human. In reproductive cloning, the egg is then stimulated to undergo the first few divisions to become an aggregate of 64 to 200 cells called a blastocyst. The blastocyst is a preimplantation embryo that contains some cells with the potential to give rise to a fetus and other cells that help to make the placenta. If the blastocyst is placed in a uterus, it can implant and form a fetus. If the blastocyst is instead maintained in the laboratory, cells can be extracted from it and grown on their own.”

Tammeus writes:

I also know it's easy to be misled on stem cell research if you don't name and understand things properly.

Apparently he knows better than the American Medical Association and the National Academy of Sciences.  Mr. Tammeus, maybe it is you that needs some enlightening so you can learn how to "name and understand things properly."

Hat Tip: Catholic Key

The following passage from Never Let Me Go explains how society came to accept the creation and harvesting of clones.  It is my favorite passage from the novel because it illustrates just how slippery the slope is. Just how easy it is to label a human life as "not human" to satisfy a perceived need.  Here a woman explains to a clone how it was she came to be and why her lot in life is what it is:

After the great war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after the other so rapidly, there wasn't time to take stock, to ask sensible questions.  Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions.  This is what the world noticed the most, wanted the most.  And for a long time, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in a kind of vacuum. 

But by the time people came to consider...whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well by then it was too late.  There was no way to reverse the process.  How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? 

There was no going back.  However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease.  So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you.  And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us.  That you weren't really human, so it didn't matter. [my emphasis]

Never Let Me Go is now a movie.  Here is the trailer.  I really hope they left the above passage intact because it is a truth that everyone needs to hear.

Holly the semi-cloned fish

From NewsAsia.com:

A fish named Holly may have placed Singapore on the world map for being the birthplace of the very first semi-cloned animal.

By combining the stem cell of an embryo - one which is created to contain only one set of chromosomes - with an egg which provides the other set, three National University of Singapore (NUS) researchers were able to create a fish that is not an exact clone.

In traditional cloning, a baby is formed from a stem cell with two sets of chromosomes from one parent, making it an exact duplicate - and spawning great debate about the ethics of cloning since the world's first animal, Dolly the sheep, was cloned from an adult stem cell in 1996.

This begs the question: why would scientists want to create an animal that was only semi-cloned?  As with much crazy manipulations in creating life, scientists envision this technique being used to treat infertility in humans:

Now, the successful birth of the first semi-cloned animal, Holly the fish, means researchers can possibly use semi-cloning as a method to treat infertile couples....

His team of researchers will now look at semi-cloning mice, monkeys and, eventually, humans - if possible.

Scientists want to replace the sperm from infertile men and use a genetically modified stem cell from them for conception instead.  This would allow infertile men to have "genetically-related" offspring.

The Catholic Church would be soundly against using this technique in humans for many reasons.  First, it would require the creation of human life in a dish.  Second, it would result in a genetically modified embryo that could not but help passing that genetic modification on to its offspring.

Interestingly, this above article has a great quote on this technique from a Catholic priest:

Father James Yeo from St Anne's Church told MediaCorp: "The Catholic Church has no objection to the cloning of plants and animals as long as these technologies are not harmful to the environment and do not pose any disproportionate risks to human life."

But he reiterated that cloning of humans is not ethically acceptable, no matter what technology is used. "It (cloning) violates human dignity and dilutes the meaning of personhood. It could eventually blur the line of parentage and is open to all kinds of abuses," said Father James.

Still, human cloning should not be out of the question. In vitro fertilization was once seen as depraved God-playing and is now embraced, even by many of the devoutly religious. Cloning could be a blessing for the infertile, who otherwise could not experience biological parenthood. And, of course, it would be a blessing for the clone itself. Suppose a clone is later asked, "Are you glad you exist even though you are physically quite similar to someone else, or do you wish you had never existed?" We all know what the answer would be.

David Prentice at the Family Research Council writes about some of the "anomalies" reported by BioArts in their cloned dogs:

"Unfortunately, in addition to producing and delivering numerous perfectly healthy dog clones, we’ve also seen several strange anomalies in cloned offspring. One clone – which was supposed to be black and white – was born greenish-yellow where it should have been white. Others have had skeletal malformations, generally not crippling though sometimes serious and always worrisome. One clone of a male donor was actually born female (we still have no good explanation for how that happened). These problems are all the more worrisome given that cloning is supposedly a mature technology in general…”

Ah gender.  Such a pesky little trait.  Very hard to get right.

TENS of thousands of Scots might be donating cells for research to create cloned animal-human embryos without their consent, an ethics campaigner has warned.

Dr. Calum MacKellar has raised concerns that people donating cells for research do not realise it is legal for them to be used to create hybrid embryos. The director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics said scientists collecting cells for research into genetic diseases might be tempted to let them be used to create hybrid embryos for stem cell research.

The creation of animal-human embryos using the eggs of an animal and human cells from donors is possible under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, which comes into effect at the beginning of October.

Dr MacKellar said: "It should not be possible to create certain ethically sensitive animal-human cloned embryos without obtaining explicit consent from the human cell donors."

UK Biobank, one of the largest tissue banks in the country, is seeking to collect cells from 500,000 people across.

Although it insists it has no plans to use the cells to create cloned embryos, it has not ruled out that this might happen in the future.

Dr MacKellar said: "Out of 500,000 people, I'm sure there would be tens of thousands who would be aghast when they realise it could be used to create animal-human clones."

Hat Tip: Bioethics.com

James Symington will soon find out if you can clone a hero. This week he received five puppies, the clones of his late rescue dog, Trakr, who located the last survivor in the rubble following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York. The dogs were given to the Los Angeles-based Symington by biotech company BioArts International after he entered an essay contest in 2008 in which he explained why Trakr was worthy of cloning.

The retired Canadian police officer's first meeting with the German shepherd pups on June 14 was an emotional one, according to a statement released by BioArts International. "They're identical — down to the smallest detail," Symington said of the pups. "Few dogs are born with exceptional abilities — Trakr was one of those dogs. And if these puppies have the same attributes as Trakr, I plan on putting them in to search and rescue so they can help people the way Trakr did."

They sure are cute.  I want to make a few points here.  The first is that while this may bother you, the Catholic Church has no issue with cloning animals as long as it is done responsibly with the betterment of society in mind.  This arguably qualifies.   That being said, my second point is that just because these dogs share the same genetics as Trakr, there is absolutely no guarantee they will turn out like him.  A clone is simply a delayed twin.  As all of us know, even identical twins raised together can be polar opposites.

What I find truly interesting about this story is the scientist who led the cloning team:

The cloning took place at Sooam Biotech Research Foundation of South Korea and the procedure was led by Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk, who produced the world's first canine cloning in 2005.

You may remember Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk. He is the disgraced South Korean scientist that falsely claimed he had cloned human embryos in the now famous retracted Science paper.  (Funny how that was left out of the story.)  I suppose this is more his style considering he is not a medical doctor but a D.V.M.  (In other words he is veterinarian.  As are James Thomson, embryonic stem cell research pioneer, and Jose Cibelli, who has tinkered around with animal-human hybrid cloning.)

“Can you un-ban cloning so I can clone myself, and is the moon a part of the United States?"

Well Steven, I don't know about the moon, but President Obama cannot un-ban cloning, because cloning is not banned in the United States.  This is a common misconception among Americans.  They just assume our lawmakers would be smart enough to ban human cloning and that they have already done it.  Actually, the United States is woefully behind on regulating such issues of reproductive technologies.  I hate to keep pounding this in, but I think it is important.  Here again is my chart I complied from BioPolicyWiki.

During his campaign, Obama supported therapeutic cloning, which involves inserting cells from a patient into a fertilized egg whose nucleus has been removed. Transplanted back into the patient, the cells become disease fighters. It's tremendously promising.

Note they did not say "Transplanted back into the patient, it is hoped the cells will become disease fighters." No, they said "Transplanted back into the patient, the cells become disease fighters."  How do the editors of the Mercury News know that when therapeutic cloning has yet to yield any "patient-specific" stem cell lines let alone fight any disease in any patients?  They must be so much smarter than the rest of us in San Jose, or they have a crystal ball.

I also wonder how they can call therapeutic cloning, something that has yet to work, "tremendously promising."  It is like saying cold fusion is tremendously promising.  Just because some scientists say doesn't make it so.

But what do you expect from a newspaper that fails to mention that "inserting cells from a patient into a fertilized egg whose nucleus has been removed" doesn't create just another blob of cells.  It would create a cloned embryo that would be destroyed for those so-called "tremendously promising" "disease fighting" cells.