Cells from the blastocyst then were cultured in a lab dish and yielded stem cells that were an exact match to the donor’s DNA. Those stem cells subsequently were turned into other tissue types, such as heart cells, which potentially could be transplanted into the patient without triggering an immune rejection.
“I’m happy to hear that our experiment was verified and shown to be genuine,” said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a development biologist at Oregon Health and Science University, in Portland, Ore., who led the 2013 study that Dr. Lanza and his colleagues have now replicated.
Despite this advance, experts say it wouldn’t be easy to create a full-fledged human clone. Scientists have been trying for years to clone monkeys and have yet to succeed. Even the cloning of less-complicated creatures—from sheep to rabbits and dogs—required years of tweaking, and lots of wasted eggs and deformed fetuses, before it worked.
The recent experiments, nonetheless, have some observers worried. Dozens of countries have laws explicitly banning human reproductive cloning, though there is no equivalent federal law in the U.S. Most U.S. states don’t have such laws either, though a few, such as California, do.
“If we’re closer to some rogue scientist or fertility doctor using published techniques to create cloned humans, it certainly ups the stakes and means we should be moving to put a federal law in place,” said Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit public interest group in Berkeley, Calif.
Article Appeared @http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303626804579507593658361428?mod=trending_now_1