The Associated Press says:
The new report documents embryos made with ordinary skin cells. But it's
not the first time human cloned embryos have been made. In 2005, for
example, scientists in Britain reported using embryonic stem cells to
produce a cloned embryo. It matured enough to produce stem cells, but
none were extracted.
The announcement was made by a La Jolla, Calif., company called Stemagen. Here's part of the company's news release:
Stemagen, a privately held embryonic stem cell research company,
announced today it has become the first in the world to create, and
meticulously document, a cloned human embryo using somatic cell nuclear
transfer (SCNT).
Stemagen CEO Samuel H. Wood, M.D., Ph.D., a co-author of the
publication and a donor of the cells from which the embryos were
cloned, terms this achievement "a critical milestone in the development
of patient-specific embryonic stem cells for human therapeutic use,
potentially including developing treatments for Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's and other degenerative diseases." Stemagen's research is
exhaustively detailed in a paper published in today's issue of the
highly regarded peer-reviewed scientific journal Stem Cells.
"This is not merely a technical improvement on previous research in
this area," said Andrew French, Ph.D., lead author on the paper,
"Development of Human Cloned Blastocysts Following Somatic Cell Nuclear
Transfer (SCNT) with Adult Fibroblasts."
"No other scientific group has documented the cloning of an adult human
cell, much less been able to grow it to the blastocyst stage, the stage
at which it is the adult donor cell that is driving embryonic
development, the stage that yields the cells (the inner cell mass) from
which embryonic stem cell lines are made," said French, who is
Stemagen's Chief Scientific Officer. Embryonic stem cells hold great
promise for developing treatments for many degenerative diseases like
Alzheimer�s, Parkinson�s, and Muscular Dystrophy.
Watch this video story from NBC News.
A medical ethicist weighs in on what it all means.
Poynter's Roy Peter Clark advises journalists:
However this process works, journalists -- across media platforms --
should be at the center of it. We have the opportunity to keep
the conversation going, not only upon occasions of breaking news, but
also between moments of explosive controversy. Here are some key
topics and opportunities for coverage:
1. Check out scientists who have taken their work outside of the United
States to political cultures more receptive to genetic experimentation.
2. Pay attention to how presidential candidates and other politicians confront
these issues, especially during debates about religious
values and public health.
3. Stay alert for interesting cases, not just the dramatic ones that will inflame
passions and make reasoned debate difficult (as when parents harvest
genetic material from embryos to help save another child who needs a
bone marrow transplant).
4. Pay attention to language, to the sad and inevitable retreat of competing forces to the opposite
ends of the ideological spectrum. (Look for the right to life vs.
freedom of choice dichotomy to be replaced by right to life vs. quality
of life.)
5. Prepare for the evocation of classic literary and philosophical precedents and
analogies for the debates we are likely to have. (I've
already invoked Dr. Frankenstein, and a
television doctor alluded to the brave new world we have just entered.)
If you're serious about following (and breaking) news in the...
