Cloning Efforts Resume in U.S.
By ANTONIO REGALADO and DAVID P. HAMILTON
May 8, 2006; Page B6
Marking the re-entry of U.S. researchers into a controversial medical endeavor, two American research teams say they will resume efforts to clone human embryos.
Officials at the University of California, San Francisco said Friday that they would immediately resume a cloning program, with the goal of creating new stem-cell lines that can be used to model genetic diseases.
The renewed efforts to use cloning as a source of stem cells come on the heels of a scientific fraud in which a South Korean team’s claims to have perfected so-called therapeutic cloning were found to have been faked.
Separately, executives with Advanced Cell Technology Inc., of Alameda, Calif., said they plan to announce their cloning plans soon. Advanced Cell’s vice president of research, Robert Lanza, said the company is recruiting female egg donors and is interested in creating tailored transplant treatments.
Other institutions, notably Harvard University, are seeking to conduct similar studies, although plans by researchers affiliated with the school’s stem-cell institute have been on hold for more than a year because of extensive ethics reviews and administrative delays.
The cloning of embryos is controversial because some view it as the creation of human life for the sole purpose of scientific research. Advocates say cloning may provide a pathway for making customized stem cells useful in medical research.
Cloning programs are moving forward thanks to state laws put in place to protect and regulate the research. In California, voters also approved a ballot measure designed to provide as much as $3 billion in stem-cell funding over 10 years.
UCSF began its cloning effort in 1999, but the program ran into trouble in 2001 after UCSF lost its top stem-cell researcher, Roger Pedersen, who took a job in the United Kingdom, citing a hostile atmosphere in the U.S. Advanced Cell’s cloning effort was last active in 2003, Dr. Lanza said, and stopped because of political pressures and because the company lost its source of human eggs.
