John Arlidge in Edinburgh
THE pioneering British scientist who created the first clone of an adult animal – a lamb named Dolly, created from a sheep – admitted this week that the technique could be applied to humans.
Dr Ian Wilmut said a human embryo, produced using the same methods, could be used to treat cancer and other diseases.
Wilmut ruled out “copying” a human, but said an adult human cell could be fused with an egg to create an embryo in exactly the same way as animals like Dolly are “grown”. Key cells could then be extracted from the embryo and used to treat diseases. The embryo would die.
This admission will fuel the debate over the ethics of Wilmut’s work. This week, British Nobel prize-winning physicist Joseph Rotblat warned that such experiments represented science out of control. Such sensitive genetic engineering could result in “a means of mass destruction”.
Wilmut conceded that fusing a cell from a human adult with an egg and growing an embryo to be used to treat humans would “raise issues that would have to be considered by biologists and ethics people”. He was comfortable with the technique, which would be legal under human embryology legislation.
“We know we can use this method to `grow’ animals like Dolly, and there is no practical reason why we could not do it with humans,” he said, though it would not proceed as far as birth.
The method could be used to treat a range of life-threatening conditions, he explained. If a man had bone marrow problems, for example, a cell could be extracted from his body and fused with an egg which would then be fertilised. Fresh bone marrow cells could be extracted from the resulting embryo and put back into his body.
Politicians and scientists have expressed fresh doubts about the ethics of his work. United States President Bill Clinton called for a US medical committee to examine the implications of the Edinburgh breakthrough, and Rotblat argued that an international ethics committee should be set up to monitor developments.
He said: “I feel, however unpleasant it may be for scientists, that science may have to be controlled. We have got to tackle it because I think the whole future of mankind is in jeopardy.”
Wilmut welcomed Clinton’s intervention and Rotblat’s suggestions, but expressed irritation at the continuing “atmosphere of criticism” surrounding his success. “Here we have a remarkable achievement, a world first, and there are people who seem to make a living out of spreading angst.
“You cannot blame scientists for making these kind of discoveries. We are not Frankenstein-type people. If we hadn’t made the breakthrough somebody else would; the technology is out there. It is now up to society to decide how it should be used.”
Wilmut re-affirmed his view that cloning a human would be technically difficult and ethically unacceptable. “Producing a cloned baby from a live adult is morally repugnant and illegal.”
As the biological and ethical arguments raged, one undisputed fact emerged. Wilmut revealed that the world’s first cloned animal was named after singer Dolly Parton, because the cell used to create her came from the “impressive mammaries” of another sheep.