Cloning pioneers against human application
Ian Wilmut, leader of the team which successful cloned the infamous Dolly the sheep, has joined Rudolf Jaenisch from the Whitehead institute for biomedical research in Cambridge to condemn publicly an Italian research team's intention to clone humans. 'Animal cloning procedures produce a very low percentage of viable embryos, and of these few many die soon after birth. The survivors may have respiratory, circulatory, immune, kidney and brain abnormalities, and evidence is beginning to hint at other defects in development and the reprogramming of gene expression. Public reaction to a failed human clone could hinder research in therapeutic cell cloning for diseases like Alzheimer's,' say Jaenisch and Wilmut.