News that Chinese researchers have succeeded in growing healthy living mice from mouse skin cells takes scientists a significant step closer to human cloning[!!!], experts say, and thus figures to reignite an ethics debate.
The new feat — in which animals were grown from cells that had been reverted to embryos — is different from cloning.
Cloning, in which the nucleus is removed from a cell and implanted in a fertilized egg, has never been achieved in humans. Nor has the new technique — using induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells — been tested in them. Because that process works in mice, however, it should work in humans.
"We now have the technology to create iPS cells from skin or hair follicles," said Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology Inc., who was not involved in the studies. "...What's very troubling is that if you have a piece of skin from anybody — Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson — you could create a child."
The researchers involved in the new studies said it should not be tried on humans.
"It would not be ethical to attempt to use iPS cells in human reproduction," said Fanyi Zeng of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Her study, she added, was "in no way meant as a first step in that direction."
[Source: sun-sentinel.com]The new feat — in which animals were grown from cells that had been reverted to embryos — is different from cloning.
Cloning, in which the nucleus is removed from a cell and implanted in a fertilized egg, has never been achieved in humans. Nor has the new technique — using induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells — been tested in them. Because that process works in mice, however, it should work in humans.
"We now have the technology to create iPS cells from skin or hair follicles," said Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology Inc., who was not involved in the studies. "...What's very troubling is that if you have a piece of skin from anybody — Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson — you could create a child."
The researchers involved in the new studies said it should not be tried on humans.
"It would not be ethical to attempt to use iPS cells in human reproduction," said Fanyi Zeng of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Her study, she added, was "in no way meant as a first step in that direction."
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