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Biotech / Medical : Geron Corp. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tom pope who wrote (2745)	11/13/2003 10:31:17 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3576

11/8/03 NYT article on cloning and cloning difficulties. (Part 1) Scientists Seek Efficient Cloning Process November 8, 2003 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 12:24 p.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- Almost seven years after the birth of Dolly the sheep shocked scientists and lay people, cloning has shown mixed progress. Scientists have achieved it in more than a dozen mammal species, from mice to rabbits, goats, pigs, and horses. They've cloned a calf from a slaughtered cow. They've even cloned a wild sheep from a carcass found in a pasture. But an efficient cloning process still eludes them. Clones are more prone to physical defects than regular animals are. And researchers haven't been able to duplicate monkeys from adult or fetal tissue, a goal that could help medical research. Hovering over these biological challenges are two other issues. The Food and Drug Administration is pondering the safety of consuming meat and milk from clones and their progeny, a matter of obvious importance to ranchers contemplating cloned pigs and cattle. The FDA recently said such food doesn't appear to be hazardous, but the agency wants more public comment. Because of a voluntary industry moratorium, no products from clones have been allowed into the food supply. And the big hot button -- the prospect of making human babies through cloning -- still glows. Would that present a breakthrough for treating infertility and provide parents a genetic duplicate of a dead child? Or would it be ethically repugnant and unacceptably risky? The United States recently campaigned unsuccessfully for a United Nations ban of human cloning. But the international body voted Thursday to put off any decision for two years. Member nations are divided over how far such an agreement should go. Some say it should only ban cloning to make babies. Others, including the United States, also want to outlaw so-called ``therapeutic cloning,'' which produces and then destroys week-old embryos to harvest stem cells. Scientists hope to use stem cells for treating such illnesses as diabetes and Parkinson's disease. Meanwhile, Clonaid, a company founded by ... Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company.