A Massachusetts based company called Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced on Sunday that it has successfully cloned the first human embryo. While this announcement resulted in sharp disapproval from many religious groups the company's chief executive officer, Michael West, said that the goal of this research was not to produce cloned babies, but rather to create embryos as a source of valuable stem cells.
Competitors in the scientific community highlighted the fact that scientists at ACT have not been able to produce embryos even close to the size necessary to harvest stem cells. Only one of the cells in the trial was able to survive to the six cell stage, and all the embryos stopped dividing after a few hours.
"Do you call this thing an embryo?" asked stem cell expert John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "I would have been more impressed if they'd got these things to blastocysts."
Blastocysts are made up for about 100 cells in a hollow ball and represent one of the very early stages of development of the pre-embryo. Blastocysts are the earliest stage in development of the embryo from which stem cells can be harvested.
"The data is not very convincing," Gearhart said.
"From what I saw yesterday, these guys didn't get very far," said Kevin Wilson, spokesman for the American Society for Cell Biology.
West's team published the findings in the January issue of Scientific American, a magazine aimed at the general public, and in an online journal, E-biomed: Journal of Regenerative Medicine. This quick publication was rather unusual for this kind of research which is usually subjected to a long period of peer review, during which scientists outside the company try to reproduce the results reported in the study.
"On the one hand, I agree this is something which will be done, should be done. But to have it presented in such a fashion, even among scientists - it could have been done in a much more scientific manner, with peer reviews," Gearhart said.
Scientists who created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, called the work very preliminary.
Concern over the ethics of the procedure have caused many of the issues surrounding the Dolly sheep cloning to resurface.
"It is more a political and ethical milestone than it is a scientific milestone and certainly not a scientific breakthrough," said Harry Griffin of Scotland's Roslin Institute.
Debate over the use of stem cells for scientific purposes has reached even to the US senate and the White House.
"The use of embryos to clone is wrong," President Bush told reporters. "We should not as a society grow life to destroy it. And that's exactly what's taking place."
Several bills have been introduced to the senate proposing to ban cloning of stem cells for any reason, scientific or otherwise.
"We need to pass this before we go out of session this year," said Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican.
"Yesterday's disturbing news about the cloning of humans at the embryonic stage of life should set off a four-alarm wake-up call in the U.S. Senate," House Majority leader Richard Armey, a Texas Republican, said, "It's time for the Senate to put the deal-making aside and join the House in banning human cloning before it's too late."
Many pro-life groups, including National Right to Life support this kind of anti-cloning legislation, claiming, "This corporation is creating human embryos for the sole purpose of killing them and harvesting their cells. Unless Congress acts quickly, this corporation and others will be opening human embryo farms."
Despite the ethical concerns raised by members of congress and many religious groups, most scientists agree that this line of research is important and must proceed. Cloning holds almost infinite potential in clinical and research fields. Among many other advances, it may one day allow doctors to literally grow new organs for patients, like a heart or a liver, that perfectly match their body's DNA, thus alleviating the organ donation shortage, and erase organ rejection problems associated with transplant operations. In addition, cloned embryos could provide a valuable source of stem cells, which can be used in many areas of research.
"I have been in contact with a number of congressional staffers and I think we were beginning to look behind the scenes at what we could do in a productive manner ... and I think [the ACT cloning] brings it back to emotional level," said Gearhart, who has been petitioning congress for many years to allow for the continuation of stem cell research.
"The reason for developing human cloned embryos ... would be to produce cells that would specifically be designed for an individual, namely that would be compatible with the individual's immune system. It is a worthwhile scientific goal," said Dr. Curt Freed of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, who works with fetal cells to treat patients with Parkinson's.
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