This pic goes well with the news that came out today about researchers in California who claim to have successfully cloned human embryos. So far no stem cells were derived from the embryos, but that is the idea for future cloned embryos.
No one knows if those embryos were healthy enough to grow into babies. But the study leader, who is also the medical director of a fertility clinic, said they looked robust, even as he emphasized that he has no interest in cloning people.
“It’s unethical and it’s illegal and we hope no one else does it either,” said Samuel H. Wood, chief executive of Stemagen in La Jolla, whose skin cells were cloned and who led the study with Andrew J. French, the firm’s scientific officer.
The closely held company hopes to make embryos that are clones, or genetic twins, of patients, then harvest stem cells from those embryos and grow them into replacement tissues. When transplanted into patients, the tissues would not be rejected because the immune system would see them as “self.”
“All our efforts are being directed toward personalized medicine and diseases,” said Wood, adding that the scientists did not try to extract stem cells from the first embryos they made because they were focused on proving they could make the clones.
It’s truly disappointing, and scary, to see scientists seriously pursuing the manufacture of human life in a laboratory to be used as personalized medical treatments and replacement body parts.
H/T for picture: Alive and Young