May 28, 2021-7:22 p.m.
The dangers of human cloning were dramatically underlined yesterday.
A review of all the world’s cloned animals found clear evidence that they are at risk of a catalogue of abnormalities.
The study by Professor Ian Wilmut, leader of the team that cloned Dolly the Sheep, suggests the animals are all genetically or physically abnormal, even if they appear healthy.
Problems that have already emerged include organ deformity, premature ageing, massive obesity and damaged immune systems. There is also a high abortion rate for cloned foetuses.
Professor Wilmut said: ‘There is abundant evidence that cloning can and does go wrong, and no justification for believing this will not happen with humans.’
The report will strengthen calls for a worldwide ban on cloning that is aimed at producing a human baby.
Professor Wilmut says the ban already in operation in Europe and the U.S. should be extended everywhere. There is already deep concern that projects to clone humans may be under way.
Earlier this month controversial Italian doctor Professor Severino Antinori said he had succeeded in implanting a cloned embryo into a woman, although he has produced no evidence to back the claim.
Unlike British and American scientists, who are working to produce-cloned embryos as a source of ‘spare-part’ cells to treat disease, Professor Antinori sees no ethical bar to creating a cloned baby.
He claims 5,000 couples, including ‘three or four’ from Britain, have volunteered to take part in his work.
But Professor Wilmut, whose study was published at the weekend, said it was a clear warning that nobody should be trying to clone a child.
He said: ‘The widespread problems associated with clones have led to questions as to whether any clone is entirely normal.’
Dolly, who was cloned at the Roslin Institute in 1996, has developed arthritis earlier than might have been expected. Scientists believe she may be ageing prematurely because she was cloned from a six-year-old adult.
Professor Wilmut’s study highlighted other unpredictable defects suffered by cloned animals.
A calf cloned in France did well for several weeks but died suddenly at 51 days after its ability to produce white blood cells failed.
Scientists at Roslin had to put down a 12- day- old cloned lamb because the muscles around its lungs had grown so thick that it had great difficulty breathing. Currently, almost 99 per cent of animal cloning procedures end in failure. Only just over 1 per cent result in living, apparently healthy offspring.
The rest of the embryos are so badly damaged they tend to be aborted, stillborn or born with chronic deformities affecting key organs including the heart, lungs and kidneys.
The problems involved in cloning animals are thought to be due to inadequate or inappropriate ‘reprogramming’ of genes during the process, which involves injecting DNA from the original into a hollowed-out donor egg.
Some scientists believe that the cloning process can turn any gene on or off at random, with unpredictable and potentially devastating impact on the health and even behaviour of a human clone.
If Professor Antinori’s claim is true, the cloned embryo he said has been implanted in a woman will currently be at about 11 weeks gestation.
But some scientists are sceptical about his assertions. He has claimed to have created the first cloned monkeys – but never produced any evidence.
