Scientists Say They Obtained Stem Cells
from Cloned Monkey Embryos  
Part Two, Part One
By Liz Townsend

Editor’s note. Please send me your thoughts at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Reporting in the November 14 online version of the scientific journal Nature, researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton claimed that they created cloned monkeys and then destroyed them to harvest embryonic stem (ES) cells.

“[W]e used a modified SCNT [somatic cell nuclear transfer] approach to produce rhesus macaque blastocysts from adult skin fibroblasts, and successfully isolated two ES cell lines from these embryos,” the researchers wrote in Nature. “DNA analysis confirmed that nuclear DNA was identical to donor somatic cells.”

This would be the first time that embryonic stem cells were harvested from a cloned primate, an animal with genetic similarities to humans. “This opens doors to human embryonic cloning,” Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Bloomberg.com. “I’m not sure we knew before that people and primates were cloneable. But what works in monkeys will work in us.”

Embryonic stem cell research supporters continue to insist that any potential human cloning will be restricted to “therapeutic” uses, meaning that the cloned embryos would be killed for their cells, rather than “reproductive cloning,” which would bring these cloned babies to birth. However, the Oregon scientists are not stopping at destroying the monkey embryos for their stem cells.

In a separate experiment, they placed “about 100 cloned macaque embryos into the wombs of about 50 surrogate mothers,” The Independent reported, “but so far the scientists have not had any success in producing live offspring.”

In the research detailed in Nature, the scientists used cells from a rhesus monkey named Semos and implanted them in ova obtained from other monkeys.

“Nuclei from Semos’s skin cells were removed and placed into 304 eggs from 14 female monkeys,” according to the London Times. “The scientists attribute their success to new technique for handling the eggs during this nuclear transfer process.”

Stem cells obtained from the cloned embryos were then manipulated into forming cell lines that were genetically identical to the donor monkey. Nature commissioned an independent assessment that confirmed that the cell lines were derived from the monkey, the Times reported.

However, the fact that only two viable stem cell lines were obtained from hundreds of eggs shows that the procedure is extremely inefficient.

“The low success rate of 0.7 per cent means that it is still too early to use the new technique to attempt to clone human embryos, especially given the shortage of human eggs available for such research, scientists said,” according to the Times. “It also means the method would not yet be a practical means of cloning human embryos for reproductive purposes.”

Beyond the moral bankruptcy of creating life and then destroying it, pro-lifers warn that the need for ova to conduct such cloning experiments could lead to abuse. “The egg dearth will continue to thwart human cloning in the immediate future, creating much pressure among human cloners to gain access to eggs by any means necessary,” Wesley J. Smith wrote on his web site. “In the coming years, we must be ever-ready to act to thwart the creation of a human egg commodities market that would exploit destitute women.”

Please send your comments to Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part Two, Part One