Conference vaxcat::ef97

    >I heard on the news this morning that the English have "Cloned
    >an adult sheep".

    Bloody typical. It was the Scots who cloned the sheep. They took a
    single cell from an adult sheep's udder and inserted this in into an
    unfertilized egg. This was placed inside the womb of a sheep who
    brought it to term. I will see if I can find the news story.

    Jamie.

    RTos 23-Feb-97 12:54    

    Scientists Claim First Clone of Adult Animal

    Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd.  All rights reserved.
  
    LONDON (Reuter) - British scientists said on Sunday they had created
    the world's first clone of an adult animal in a breakthrough that
    should provide a huge boost to work on aging, genetics and medicines. 

    The clone is a seven-month old sheep called Dolly, who was created at
    Edinburgh's Roslin Institute from a single cell taken from the udder of
    an adult sheep, turned into an embryo and then implanted in a surrogate
    mother. 

    "What this will mostly be used for is to produce more health care
    products. It will enable us to study genetic diseases for which there
    is presently no cure and track down the mechanisms that are involved,"
    the leader of the Roslin team, Ian Wilmut, told Britain's Press
    Association news agency. 

    "The next step is to use the cells in culture in the lab and target
    genetic changes into that culture," he said. 

    The technique could theoretically be used to clone humans -- as
    foreshadowed in British author Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and
    the film "The Boys From Brazil" in which clones of Hitler were made.

    But British scientists say no responsible biologist would support such
    work and it would be outlawed anyway by British laws covering embryo
    and fertilization research. 

    "We are aware that there is potential for misuse, and we have provided
    information to ethicists and the Human Embryology Authority. We believe
    that it is important that society decides how we want to use this
    technology and makes sure it prohibits what it wants to prohibit,"
    Wilmut said. 

    "It would be desperately sad if people started using this sort of
    technology with people," he added. 

    Britain's Observer newspaper said the breakthrough would make it
    possible to genetically engineer sheep for the production of human
    medicines, such as blood-clotting factors in their milk. 

    Scientists could also gain insights into aging by using the genes of an
    old animal to make an embryo and study the way tiny genetic errors were
    accumulated through age. 

    The Roslin team last year cloned sheep from cells taken from embryos
    and cultivated in a laboratory. 

    Before now it had been thought impossible to perform the same operation
    using cells from an adult animal, because an adult body is so much more
    complex than an embryo. 

    REUTER

    AP 23-Feb-1997 16:48 EST   REF5027

    Copyright 1997. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    Researchers Clone Lamb

    By MALCOLM RITTER

    AP Science Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) -- Researchers have cloned an adult mammal for the first
    time, an astonishing scientific landmark that raises the unsettling
    possibility of making copies of people. 

    Scientists slipped genes from a 6-year-old ewe into unfertilized eggs
    and used them to try to create pregnancies in other sheep. The result:
    A lamb named Dolly, born in July, that is a genetic copy of the ewe. 

    The feat opens the door to cloning prized farm animals such as cattle,
    and should make it much easier to add or modify genes in livestock,
    experts said. 

    It's also scientifically stunning. Researchers used DNA from the ewe's
    udder cells, proving that mature mammal cells specialized for something
    other than reproduction could be used to regenerate an entire animal. 

    Scientists had thought that was impossible. 

    Experts said the same technique might make it possible to clone humans,
    but emphasized that it would be unethical to try. 

    "There is no clinical reason why you would do this. Why would you make
    another human being?" said Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists who cloned
    the sheep. "We think it would be ethically unacceptable and certainly
    would not want to be involved in that project." 

    Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization,
    which represents about 700 companies and research centers in the United
    States and abroad, agreed. 

    "I can think of no ethical reason to apply this technique to human
    beings, if in fact it can be applied," he said Sunday. 

    "The biotechnology industry exists to use genetic information to cure
    disease and improve agriculture. We opposed human cloning when it was a
    theory. Now that it may be possible, we urge that it be prohibited by
    law." 

    A report of the sheep cloning will be published in Thursday's issue of
    the journal Nature by Wilmut and colleagues at the Roslin Institute
    near Edinburgh, Scotland, and others. 

    Before the new work, scientists had been able to take tissue from adult
    frogs and create genetically identical tadpoles. But the tadpoles never
    developed fully into frogs. 

    To do the sheep cloning, scientists took cells from the ewe's udder
    tissue and cultivated them in a lab, using a treatment that made the
    cells essentially dormant. They also took unfertilized sheep eggs and
    removed the nucleus, the cells' central control room that contains the
    genes. 

    Then they put the udder cells together with the egg cells and used an
    electric current to make them fuse. The eggs, now equipped with a
    nucleus, grew into embryos as if they'd been fertilized. The embryos
    were put into ewes to develop. 

    The process was horrendously inefficient. Of 277 fused eggs, only one
    led to a lamb. 

    Wilmut said he expects the efficiency to improve. Someday a dairy
    farmer, for example, might make a few clones of cows that are
    especially good at producing milk, resisting disease and reproducing,
    he said. 

    A farmer wouldn't want entire herds of identical animals, because
    populations need a diverse genetic makeup, he said. Without that
    diversity, a lethal disease that struck one cow might wipe out all the
    clones, too. 

    The advance will also provide a much more efficient way to insert genes
    into livestock, Wilmut and others said. Inserted genes can be used to
    make animals secrete valuable drugs in their milk, for example.

    Scientists currently insert genes into fertilized eggs in a laboratory,
    which is a very inefficient way to produce animals that use the genes
    properly. 

    With the new technique, they could start with a virtually unlimited
    supply of body cells from an adult animal, use a much more effective
    lab technique to insert genes, identify cells that use the genes as
    planned, and fuse them to eggs. 

    Wilmut and colleagues published research last year that suggested this
    technique could be done by inserting genes in embryo cells. But body
    cells from an adult are far more plentiful than embryo cells, making
    the idea more feasible. 

    Caird Rexroad Jr., an animal gene expert for the federal Agricultural
    Research Service in Beltsville, Md., called the new work historic for
    showing that whole mammals could be regenerated from mature-body cells
    other than sperm or egg. 

    
    	wouldn't that pretty much take your role out of the picture,
    	guys?
    
    	the femi-nazis would just LOVE that.

    Tut tut denise...
    
    	I should have thought that you'd seen enough Star Trek episodes to
    	know what happens if Cloning is used as the main method of
    	reproduction, I mean not even the BORG use it !
    
    	But there again Star Trek is all fiction isn't it	;-)
    
    gerbil$rushing_home_for_STTNG

    denise,
    
    it pretty much takes the women out as well. Their role is reduced to
    being a suitable nest in which to grow the egg. Wasn't that the premise
    of "Hellstrom's Hive"?
    
    After all the clone contains no genetic material from the woman who
    grows the baby. At first it sounds interesting - one might choose to
    put aside some genetic material from one's loved ones so that they
    could be regrown if tragedy struck. But you wouldn't get a replacement
    wife, you'd get a baby with the genetic make-up of your wife.
    
    Then - would you get a person anything like the clone donor? Physically
    maybe, mentally probably not. I grew up at a time when we didn't have
    TV, video games, PCs, cars, etc etc. Would I turn out the same?
    Absolutely not.
    
    Andrew

    
    	andrew,
    	you really do know how to reduce things to bare bones.
    	even if a woman is considered a mere `nest' the need 
    	for her still exists whereas the men...
    
    	this, i believe is the premise of the femi-nazis...
    	no men.
    
    	kevin,
    
    	me watch star trek?? you're being funny again, aren't you?

Nah, the gurlies still need people to mend their cars, fit plugs, all that
kind of stuff...

//atp

    
    	mr::POTTER,
    	mind if i post this in WOMANNOTES?

    	mr::POTTER,
    	mind if i post this in WOMANNOTES?

Go ahead...just make sure my name ain't on it anywhere :-)

//atp

    Not only is the subject of cloning sheep making the news, it also seems
    to be making the ewes.
        
    Jamie,
    
    Go to your room.

    
    	>groan<
    
    	next!

    re .6
    
    Ahh, but Ira Levin solved that problem in The Boys From Brazil. Simply
    place the cloned sprogs in an anvironment as similar as possible to
    that which the clonee developed in et voila, a modern bunch Hitlers.
    
    Balders

    >place the cloned sprogs in an anvironment as similar as possible to
     
    ODE
    
    Jamie.

    
    	shame on you, balders.

    AP 5-Mar-1997 20:09 EST   REF5923

    Copyright 1997. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    Chicken-Quail Mix Causes Uproar

    By AMANDA COVARRUBIAS

    Associated Press Writer

    SAN DIEGO (AP) -- When is a chicken not a chicken? When it sings and
    bobs its head like a quail, thanks to an experimental brain-cell
    transplant. 

    In what sounds like something out of a B horror movie, Evan Balaban, an
    experimental neurobiologist at the Neurosciences Institute in San
    Diego, carried out the switch. 

    "The larger implications are what this will teach us about the
    development of brain circuits that produce behavior," Balaban said
    Wednesday. "It could eventually help people who have brain damage or
    mental illness or even brain diseases." 

    His research on Plymouth Rock chickens and Japanese quail was published
    Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
    Although different from cloning, his work is adding to the furor over
    genetic experimentation. 

    "This is more dangerous than cloning," Rush Limbaugh said on his radio
    show Wednesday. "When the animal rights people get in on this, I might
    join them." 

    But one ethicist said this experiment's implications aren't dangerous. 

    "This is a big week to hyperventilate about barnyard biotechnology,"
    said Glenn McGee, director of research ethics at the University of
    Pennsylvania. "But we've got to be careful not to overreact. It doesn't
    mean that soon there will be armies of baby Ronald Reagans or Michael
    Jordans." 

    Balaban does not see his work as opening the way for people with
    socially unacceptable behavior being forced to undergo brain surgery. 

    "There's no good reason to do this in humans," Balaban said. "It's not
    technically possible to do this in mammals anyway. There are some
    enormous obstacles that would have to be overcome." 

    In the quail-and-chicken experiment, after much trial and error,
    Balaban discovered that certain cells in the quail midbrain changed the
    animal's sound patterns, and other cells in the quail brain stem
    changed head movement during singing. 

    Balaban incubated fertilized quail and chicken eggs for 48 hours and
    then cut tiny windows in their shells. Cells in the chicken embryo were
    removed and substituted with corresponding quail brain cells. 

    Quail and chickens were used because each species has a distinctive
    crowing and bobbing pattern. 

    Sound patterns and bobbing behaviors were documented on videotape in
    experimental chickens that received quail brain cell transplants and in
    a control group of chickens that received chicken transplants only. 

    The chickens were killed after 14 days to further document the results
    with brain examinations. 

    Balaban's previous research, published in 1988 in the journal Science,
    transplanted cells governing only the quail's sound pattern. No bobbing
    measurements were done then. 

    "Evan can separate the sound and posture involved in crowing," said
    Masakazu Konishi, a neurobiologist at the California Institute of
    Technology in Pasadena. "That's new. That's interesting. It means
    posture and sound that usually occur together in crowing are controlled
    by different neuromechanisms." 

    Balaban's work continues a long line of research by neuroscientists who
    are trying to understand cells and their connection to certain
    behaviors. 

    "We know from transplant work done over the last 10 years that you can
    never rewire or replace cells lost or damaged," Balaban said. "So if we
    want to develop new therapies, we have to work with the cells still
    left. It could have a good impact on some behavioral deficits." 

    AP 5-Mar-1997 19:20 EST   REF5869

    Copyright 1997. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    Clone Fear May Slow Research

    By PAUL RECER

    AP Science Writer

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Michigan congressman who is offering two bills to
    ban human cloning research was warned Wednesday that a "rush to
    legislate" could cripple biological studies that benefit medicine and
    agriculture. 

    Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., said he was introducing one bill that
    would permanently ban federal funding of human cloning research and
    another that would make it unlawful for anyone in the United States to
    engage in such research. 

    Ehlers, a physicist, said the action would put legislative teeth into
    an executive ban on federal funding of human embryo research that was
    announced Tuesday by President Clinton. The president urged privately
    funded labs to also refrain from human cloning experiments. 

    New laws are needed, Ehlers said, because "it is important for us to
    draw the boundary." 

    The congressman described the bills during a hearing on cloning of the
    House Science technology subcommittee. The witnesses included a group
    of scientists led by Dr. Harold Varmus, the director of the National
    Institutes of Health. 

    Washington concern over human cloning was prompted by the recent
    announcement that a Scottish researcher had cloned a sheep, named
    Dolly, from udder cells removed from an adult ewe. Shortly afterward,
    scientists at the Oregon Primate Research Center announced that two
    Rhesus monkeys had been cloned from embryo cells. 

    Ehlers said these recent developments have captured the interest of the
    American public and there is worry that cloning could be misused.
    Introducing legislation now, he said, could head off a groundswell of
    public distaste that could cause a ban of all genetic research. 

    But Varmus urged Ehlers and Congress to proceed with caution in what it
    forbids in biological research because some animal cloning or other
    types of genetic manipulation can benefit humanity. 

    "Unless a bill puts a very tight fence around that which Congress wants
    to forbid, it could cut off research toward a wanted goal," Varmus
    said. 

    He said he believes Clinton's action on cloning "was intended to give
    us a period of deliberation" and he urged Congress to wait until a
    presidential group, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, makes
    its report in 90 days. 

    Dr. Thomas H. Murray, a member of the advisory commission, said,
    "Before any irreversible action is taken, we need to be given 90 days
    for public debate." 

    Dr. Caird E. Rexroad Jr. of the Department of Agriculture said his
    agency's scientists have been cloning farm animals using genes from
    embryos since 1986. This is different from the Scottish experiment that
    produced Dolly using genes from an adult animal, he said. 

    Rexroad said the USDA is developing gene transfer techniques that will
    produce animals that are low in fat and resistant to disease. Cloned
    cows, he said, could produce more and richer milk. 

    James A. Geraghty, president of Genzyme Transgenics Corp., said his
    company was using cloning techniques to make animals whose organs could
    be used for human transplantation. Genetically altered cows or goats,
    he said, could produce milk that contains drugs for the treatment of
    human disease. 

    Dr. M. Susan Smith, director of the Oregon Primate Research Center,
    said her researchers hope to use cloning techniques to produce a group
    of identical monkeys that could be used to test drugs. 

    "Genetically identical monkeys would revolutionize the use of nonhuman
    primates in biomedical research," Smith said. Fewer monkeys would be
    needed and the drug studies would have a higher accuracy because there
    would be no genetic differences between animals, she said. 

    REUTER

    RTos 06-Mar-97 05:38    

    Scottish Researchers Escalate Cloning Plans

    Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd.  All rights reserved.

    LONDON (Reuter) - The scientists who created Dolly the sheep, the
    world's first adult clone, said Wednesday they hoped to make a
    genetically-manipulated clone that contained human genes by the end of
    the year. 

    The researchers at Scotland's Roslin Institute and PPL Therapeutics Plc
    also hope they can clone an adult cow by the end of the year. 

    "We expect to have transgenic clones within this year," Dr. Alan
    Colman, research director at PPL, told Reuters. Such a clone would
    contain human genes. 

    News that a sheep had been cloned using a cell from an adult sheep
    shocked the world and prompted a flurry of soul-searching about whether
    the technology was morally acceptable. 

    This week President Clinton banned federal funding of cloning and
    German Research Minister Juergen Ruettgers called for a worldwide ban
    on cloning human beings. 

    Danish scientists who were trying to produce cloned cattle said
    Wednesday they were halting experiments pending a full debate on the
    issue. 

    "We have stopped our attempt to transfer embryos using the technique
    where the cells from an adult animal are included," Henrik Callesen,
    director of the Foulum Embryo-Technology Center, told Reuters. 

    But the Roslin and PPL researchers say cloning is a natural outgrowth
    of their research into animal breeding and the production of medicines
    from animal blood and milk. 

    PPL already has non-cloned sheep that have partly human genes. The
    transgenic sheep produce a human protein, AAT, that is now being tested
    for use in treating cystic fibrosis. 

    The company also has a herd of cows in Blacksburg, Va., and is
    attempting to clone them. 

    "It is still early days," Colman said. "There are no live-born Dollies
    in the cow area." 

    But he hoped for a cow clone "quite late this year." Pig clones are
    even farther down the road, he said. 

    Dolly may be a clone but she is not transgenic, since her genes are 100
    percent sheep genes. 

    The point of the cloning is to be able to genetically manipulate cells
    before the embryos are conceived in the test-tube, thus creating live
    animals that have precisely the genetic characteristics that the
    company wants. 

    For example, PPL would like to be able to more efficiently produce AAT,
    since current ways of creating transgenic animals are hit and miss.
    They can introduce the human DNA into a cell, but it only "takes" in
    the animal cell about five percent of the time. 

    "What we actually want to do is create a successful cell and create a
    clone of animals," Colman said. "We are hoping for an instant
    production herd." 

    Cloning technology could also help researchers remove undesirable genes
    as well as put genes in, Colman said. 

    REUTER

    RTw  05-Mar-97 21:46    

    Italy moves to ban animal and human cloning

    Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd.  All rights reserved.
  
    ROME, March 5 (Reuter) - Italian Health Minister Rosy Bindi said on
    Wednesday human cloning should be outlawed and announced a temporary
    ban in Italy on all forms of human or animal experiments linked with
    cloning. 

    Bindi told a question time session in the Chamber of Deputies (lower
    house) that a ministry commission was already working on a text to
    present to Prime Minister Romano Prodi's centre-left government at a
    cabinet meeting. 

    She said that because of the close relationship between animal and
    human cloning, she had adopted an urgent ministerial measure lasting
    for three months. 

    It outlawed "any type of experimentation or intervention, however it is
    carried out, with the aim, even indirect, of human and animal cloning." 

    The controversial subject of human cloning hit the headlines last month
    after scientists in Scotland introduced the world to Dolly, a lamb
    cloned from an adult sheep. 

    Bindi said she was concerned that a lack of legislation on the subject
    could lead to experiments with no guarantees of respect for public
    health. 

    Germany on Wednesday called for a global ban on cloning humans and
    Danish scientists, working like their Scottish and Australian
    colleagues on cloning livestock, said they were halting experiments on
    cows pending a full debate on the issue. 

    Bindi also announced a ban on all commercialisation of embryos or other
    material related to artificial fertilisation. 

    REUTER

    RTw  10-Mar-97 20:23    

    Public worried by risks of cloning, meeting told

    Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd.  All rights reserved.

    By Maggie Fox 

    LONDON, March 10 (Reuter) - Consumers are frightened about genetics
    technology because they are being kept in the dark about developments
    until they hit the marketplace, delegates to a biotechnology conference
    agreed on Monday. 

    Ministers who addressed the conference agreed that Britain's extensive
    system of review committees which examines issues of biotechnology and
    genetic engineering was not enough to ease public fears about cloning
    and genetically engineered food. 

    "Consumers are no longer prepared to accept blanket statements that
    there is no risk," Alan Malcolm of the Institute for Food Research told
    the conference. 

    News that scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute had cloned a sheep
    sent shivers around the world, with U.S. President Bill Clinton calling
    for the National Biotechnology Advisory Commission to report on the
    implications, and meantime tightening a ban on federal funding of human
    clone research. 

    Several other governments and the European Union are also investigating
    the implications of research. 

    EU battles are also underway over the import of genetically modified
    soybeans and maize from the United States. 

    Robin Grove-Wright of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change
    at Lancaster University said trust was a problem. 

    "There is a major problem of public trust which has been exacerbated by
    the recent BSE crisis," he told the conference. Government and industry
    were seen as "operating mendaciously and against the public interest." 

    Grove-Wright presented a report his group did on public attitudes to
    biotechnology. 

    "Fewer than half the participants had heard of biotechnology in the
    context of food," the report read. Many people felt it was "unnatural"
    and drew analogies with BSE, which scientists say arose from feeding
    sheep's remains to cows. 

    "The development of genetically modified foods appeared to be seen as
    lying outside people's control, with little sphere for public choice or
    intervention. It was commonly seen as being dirven by powerful
    financial interests," the report said. 

    Delegates agreed that Britain's complicated system of committees
    discussing such issues, which includes the Human Genetics Advisory
    Commission and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, was
    not enough. 

    "The regulatory system alone cannot carry the burden of maintaining
    public confidence. All those with an interest in the technology must
    work closely together to achieve this," Environment Secretary John
    Gummer said. 

    "I would like to see the industry adopt and develop effective voluntary
    measures," Gummer told the 200 delegates, who included scientists,
    experts from environmental and medical bodies and consumer groups. 

    "We have to keep the legislation ahead of the technology," David Fisk
    of the Environment Department said. 

    He also said there should be more examination to ensure the technology
    was as safe as companies said it was. "We need to look at the research
    that is confirming our risk assessments." 

    REUTER

    RTos 16-Mar-97 18:59    

    Experts: Human Clones Wouldn't be Exact Copies

    Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd.  All rights reserved.

    WASHINGTON (Reuter) - As society debates the ethics of cloning,
    scientists and ethicists say it is important to understand that cloning
    a human being could never produce an exact duplicate. 

    Everything from the cytoplasm of the egg cell where the DNA genetic
    blueprint is placed, to whether a cloned person remembered the Beatles
    would impose individuality on "borrowed" DNA. 

    Even identical twins, who are nature's clones, are not totally
    identical. Clones made in a laboratory would be twins born years or
    decades apart, separated by generational and cultural chasms. 

    "By far the most mischievous misunderstanding is this idea that you can
    Xerox people," said Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University
    and chairman of the National Bioethics Advisory Committee which
    President Clinton has asked to evaluate the legal and moral dimensions
    of cloning. 

    "If you lost a child or parent, and wanted to bring a person back --
    you can't do that," Ian Wilmut, the scientist who cloned a sheep in
    Scotland, told a U.S. Senate panel last week. 

    Many experts, including Wilmut, are deeply troubled by the idea of
    cloning humans, a technology that could transform reproduction into
    replication; that could turn a parent and child into a pair of
    identical twins. 

    "If you take the DNA and, 20 years later, you put it in a different
    uterus, you couldn't possibly replicate a person," said Harvard
    University medical ethicist Lisa Geller. 

    "And if that's what you're trying to do, to replicate a person --
    you're going to have a hell of a hard time with a teenager," she added. 

    Ethicists, geneticists, biologists and psychologists argue endlessly
    about the balance of "nature" and "nurture" in human development, about
    which traits are inborn and which are shaped from environment and
    experience. 

    But even those experts tilting toward the "nature" end of the spectrum,
    like psychologist Thomas Bouchard of the well-known University of
    Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research, say human clones would
    look alike, but would not necessarily be alike. 

    "The difference in temporal experience would magnify the difference in
    personality," said Bouchard, who believes about half of psychological
    tendencies are inherited. 

    Environmental factors come into play from the very start. The cytoplasm
    of the cell into which the DNA is placed will be different from the
    adult cell from which it is derived. Small pieces of genetic material,
    known as mitochondrial DNA, will also be distinct.

    And once the clone is implanted into a womb, the prenatal environment
    will differ as well. The diet of the woman carrying the fetus, whether
    she smokes, what chemicals or toxins she encounters in her daily life
    all affect the child. 

    "Identical twins are usually brought up roughly together, and treated
    in similar ways. But if the clone and source differ by a generation ...
    all kinds of things change over a generation, what's allowed, what's
    taught, our diet," said Philip Kitcher, a philosopher at the University
    of San Diego and the author of "The Lives to Come: the Genetic
    Revolution and Human Possibilities." 

    A clone of Albert Einstein, taken out of 19th century Germany and
    placed, for instance, in late 20th century southern California would
    probably still be smart, and may well have the same wild white hair.
    But he would not necessarily become a physicist. 

    A clone of Michael Jordanwould probably be tall, agile and have
    lightning reflexes. But he might not become a professional basketball
    player. 

    And a clone of any ordinary man or woman might look almost
    indistinguishable from the genetic parent, but could have a whole
    different view of the world, based on experience, luck or what
    theologians would call soul. 

    "Dolly (the cloned sheep) is a snapshot -- not a snapshot of an adult
    sheep but one of that sheep's cells," said University of Pennyslvania
    bioethicist Glenn McGee.

    REUTER

    AP 9-Apr-1997 14:52 EDT   REF5744

    Copyright 1997. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    Cloning Explained

    By PAUL RECER

    AP Science Writer

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dolly, the Scottish sheep that is the first mammal
    cloned from an adult, is a biological confusion to most Americans. A
    primer on what cloning is and what it's not: 

    --Cloning is not creating an instant carbon copy adult human from
    another adult. 

    That is impossible. A cloned adult would have to go through the same
    development -- from gestation and birth through childhood to adulthood
    -- as do all other humans. 

    To clone a 40-year-old adult would take 40 years, plus nine months. By
    the time the clone was age 40, the original adult would be almost 81.
    They would be like twins separated by four decades. 

    And the clone would be only a genetic copy. Much of what shapes
    personality and character are the mental and emotional effects of
    nurturing, culture, education and luck. These are too imperfectly
    understood to be duplicated from one generation to another. 

    --Cloning is reproducing without sex. 

    Natural reproduction among mammals involves a union of sperm from the
    father and egg from the mother. Both the sperm and the egg carry genes.
    When these unite, they result is a genetically unique individual. It
    may bear resemblance to one parent or another, but it is not precisely
    like either. 

    In cloning, the embryo gets all genes from one individual. In Dolly's
    case, all of her genes came from a 6-year-old adult ewe. 

    The process, though, required the help of two other female sheep. From
    one sheep, researchers removed an egg and took out the nucleus, the
    master control center that includes the genes. 

    From the 6-year-old ewe, the researchers then took a mature udder cell
    and removed the nucleus, including the genes. The nucleus was put into
    the enucleated egg from the first ewe. Lab manipulation caused the egg
    and transplanted nucleus to develop into an embryo. This was then
    placed into the uterus of a third ewe, which later gave birth. 

    The result, Dolly, has the genes from one ewe nurtured in the egg of a
    second ewe, and born to still another ewe. 

    There was no male, or father, involved. Dolly's genes match those of
    the 6-year-old ewe that contributed the udder cell. The other two ewes
    have no genetic relationship with Dolly. 

    --Cloning is not easy. 

    Researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland tried 277 times before
    they produced Dolly. 

    Along the way, a number of defective lambs died shortly after birth.
    There were also scores of embryos spontaneously aborted. 

    Ian Wilmut, the lead scientist, said that is a main reason he believes
    cloning is not for humans: There is a risk of producing babies with
    monstrous defects. 

    --Cloning's technology could have valuable uses. 

    By precisely controlling genes, farm animals could be made to produce
    more milk, meat or wool. 

    Manipulating genes could cause milk from goats and cows to produce
    pharmaceutical proteins -- medicines that can cure. Once such animals
    were created, cloning would allow science to make huge herds of walking
    drug plants. 

    Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health,
    argues that cloning also holds the promise of learning how to turn
    genes on and off. That would mean human genes could be made to produce
    new tissue for the repair of old or diseased tissue: skin for burn
    patients, new limbs for severed ones, new bone marrow for cancer
    patients. 

    All would use only a few genes and would not require the making of a
    cloned human.