Cloning: Update

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Nov 26 2001 - 09:20:58 MST


Michael West and the doctor who donated the skin cells to make
the embryos were on the Today show this morning. The doctor
was crippled in a biking accident, so I think the empathy card
was played well. I thought Dr. West could have done better when
he was asked which diseases could be treated with stem cells.
He should have had a long list that he can rapidly recite from
memory.

Here is a CNN report:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/11/26/human.cloning/index.html

Of note:
> Last summer, the House of Representatives voted
> to ban human cloning and set penalties of up to
> 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine for those
> convicted of attempting to clone humans.
>
> The measure was never taken up by the Senate,
> so it never became law.
>
> Over the weekend, several lawmakers said
> West's announcement could prompt the Senate to
> take up the legislation.

So we may not be out of the woods for this session yet.

I'll add from a technical standpoint -- using skin punch biopsies
(the method ACT used) as a source for the transplanted cells
*is* likely to produce poor results. Those cells (even fibroblasts
or epidermal stem cells) are pretty differentiated. You really want
circulating stem cells or intestinal crypt (stem-like) cells which
are presumably less differentiated and more likely to be revertable
to totipotency.

Robert



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