Now human genes in animal eggs

It was nearly a decade ago that Jose Cibelli plugged his own DNA into a cow’s egg in a novel cloning attempt that was condemned as unethical by President Clinton...

It was nearly a decade ago that Jose Cibelli plugged his own DNA into a cow’s egg in a novel cloning attempt that was condemned as unethical by President Clinton and landed the Michigan State University researcher in a mess of controversy.

Even though Cibelli and his colleagues patented the so-called interspecies cloning technique, they soon abandoned the research as a failure and the uproar subsided.

Now the tempest is brewing all over again. At least three respected teams of British scientists have reignited the moral debate over inserting human genes into animal eggs by proposing similar experiments to Cibelli’s.

Their goal is to eliminate the need for women to donate eggs for the cloning of human embryos, a research goal they say will enable them to better understand the genetic causes of many diseases, and design personalised medicines.

Currently, the few scientists actively pursuing human cloning are hobbled by a nearly nonexistent human egg supply. And each researcher will need thousands of them. “Getting eggs from women is the bottleneck to cloning,” Cibelli said. “An alternative would be welcomed.”

All three UK teams aim to get around that bottleneck by taking DNA from patients sick with a disease like Alzheimer’s and fuse it with cow eggs that have had all their genetic material removed. The hope is that the human DNA will trick the eggs into thinking they’re pregnant, beginning development.

After about five days of growth, the cloned embryos would be destroyed and the stem cells extracted.

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Ian Wilmut, the British researcher who cloned Dolly the sheep in 1997, said that if the British government approved licences for Minger and Armstrong, he will apply for a third.