When the biotech company Bayer CropScience AG requested federal permission in August to market a variety of gene-altered rice, it assured itself a small, unwanted place in history: the first to seek approval for a genetically engineered food that was already — illegally — on the market.
Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor. After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here, frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived at the Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to the hospital.
Deriving a stem cell line from a cloned human embryo still represents one of the most formidable scientific barriers in biology. Challenged with deep ethical questions, misled by high-profile research fraud, and obfuscated in the eyes of the public, it’s fair to say that in the race to overcome this hurdle no one’s close to being at the starting blocks.
Cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut and three teams of U.K. scientists have asked their government for permission to restart cloning research, which they argue will eliminate the need for women volunteers to take fertility drugs in order to donate their eggs to science. „It is treating a human being at his or her earliest stages as a mere tool,“ said Georgetown University philosophy professor Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, a member of the President?s Council on Bioethics,
Guidelines proposed by the National Institutes of Health to carry out an order made last month by President Obama would allow research with federal financing only on stem cells derived from surplus embryos at fertility clinics. The money would still be prohibited for stem cell lines created solely for research purposes and for embryos created through a technique known as therapeutic cloning.
South Korea has been reluctant to support local scientists for research into cloned human stem cells. However, with the new U.S. government deciding to lift the country’s restrictions on federal funding for new stem cell research, Korean regulators are feeling increasing pressure to do the same for researchers here. The National Bioethics Committee last month delayed its decision over whether to allow the Seoul-based Cha Medical Center to conduct research on embryonic stem cells created from cloned human embryos.
„Using the term ‘SCNT’ instead of ‘cloning’ dramatically raised approval ratings“.
A Kentucky fertility specialist has published the world`s first scientific account of an attempt to create a cloned child, a scientific milestone that many researchers will likely condems.
A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests.
The South Korean cloning scientist accused of faking his stem cell research has gone on trial in Seoul, charged with fraud and embezzlement.
