Mavericks aiming to produce the first cloned person have claimed they are already a step or two ahead of Advanced Cell Technology, the Massachusetts-based company that announced on Sunday it had created cloned human embryos.
鈥淲e鈥檝e created many human embryos,鈥� says Brigitte Doisselier, chief executive officer at Clonaid, a California-based UFO cult that has vowed to produce cloned people. She welcomes news of ACT鈥檚 cloned embryos: 鈥淚鈥檓 not feeling alone any more.鈥�
Doisselier refused to say whether any women were pregnant with cloned embryos, but told 快猫短视频: 鈥淭he research on human cloning is done鈥�. She repeated a statement of April 2001 that 鈥渢he next announcement will be the birth of a baby鈥�.
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Cell count
Doisselier says that Clonaid has already published pictures on its website of cloned human embryos consisting of eight cells, two more than the most developed embryo created by ACT. She adds that once a patent has been filed, she aims to submit a report of Clonaid鈥檚 cloning experiments for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Other would-be cloners are also keen to move forward. Severino Antinori, the controversial Italian fertility expert vowed to attempt human cloning earlier in 2001, together with Panayiotis Zavos of the Andrology Institute of America in Lexington, Kentucky.
Zavos failed to respond to 快猫短视频 inquiries, but he is reported in The Sun, a UK tabloid newspaper, as wanting to clone a baby in Britain by Christmas. But even if Zavos鈥檚 claim is true, he would be thwarted by a new British law that could be in place by the 30 November. This would ban anyone from implanting a cloned embryo into a woman鈥檚 uterus.
Tough task
The unconfirmed claims of these scientists come as mainstream scientists cast doubt on ACT鈥檚 experiments 鈥� implying that human cloning may be more difficult to achieve than thought. Only three of ACT鈥檚 19 cloned embryos grew beyond a single cell, and none grew larger than a ball of six cells.
Other scientists point out that embryos are only useful for medical purposes once they have become a 鈥渂lastocyst鈥� of 100 to 150 cells. At this point, they contain embryonic stem cells, the versatile cells which can in theory be extracted and converted into tissues or organs for transplant.
ACT鈥檚 embryos fell well short of this. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a measure of how hard this is,鈥� says Tom Okarma, chief executive officer of Geron, a rival 鈥渟tem cell鈥� company in Menlo Park, California.
Harry Griffin, at the Roslin Institute, Scotland, where Dolly the Sheep was created, told Reuters that ACT鈥檚 experiments were 鈥渕ore a political and ethical milestone than a scientific milestone, and certainly not a scientific breakthrough鈥�.
His colleague, Ian Wilmut, pointed out that eggs could reach the six-cell stage almost on 鈥渁uto-pilot鈥�. 鈥淭he fact that it did not develop beyond six cells suggests it is fairly lightweight research,鈥� Wilmut said.
