Cloners make new claim

Scientists at Stemagen, an obscure California biotechnology company, have suddenly become famous thanks to their claim that they've become the first to clone an adult human being.

The scientists claim that they took adult skin cells and inserted them into hollowed eggs, creating embryos that are the adult's genetic twin. A similar claim proved fraudulent in 2005, so the scientific community is offering more reticent praise this time. Stemagen also failed to get stem cells from the cloned embryo - the whole point of human cloning - leading Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology to dismiss the news as "underwhelming."

Scientists have cloned embryos before, but Dorinda Bordlee, senior counsel for the Bioethics Defense Fund, told WoW cloning an adult is more complicated. Embryonic cells are blank slates (called undifferentiated cells), so it is easier to insert the cells into an egg and grow an identical embryo. It is more difficult to take a differentiated cell, like an adult skin cell, and force it back into an undifferentiated state.

There are no federal laws against human cloning and the White House has banned federal funding for cloning. Others have poured millions into research, including Bill Gates, Harvard University, and the state of California. California's Proposition 71 gives $3 billion to stem cell research.

Only six states have comprehensive bans on human cloning. Other states, like California and Connecticut, allow "therapeutic cloning" (cloning for research purposes) and ban "reproductive cloning" (cloning to initiate a pregnancy). This is supposed to ensure that scientists destroy each cloned embryo they create, but Bordlee notes that if a scientist implanted an embryo in the uterus of a willing woman, the state could do nothing to prevent the pregnancy.

Bordlee said human cloning leads to a "whole host of social and human rights problems." She also said that scientists can now turn adult skin cells into stem cells without destroying embryos, a practice more successful than Stemagen's and also ethically acceptable.