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Coming Soon: 'Designer' Babies

Posted on: Monday, 7 April 2008, 09:00 CDT

Fears are growing that a form of cloning that is easier to carry out than the technique used to create Dolly the sheep may be used on human embryos to produce "designer" babies. Scientists have already used the procedure to create mice. It saw them inserting the skin cells of an adult animal into existing embryos. Some of the offspring were 100 per cent genetically identical to the adult animal.

The breakthrough was lauded last year by the Catholic Church and President George Bush as a morally acceptable way of producing embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy human embryos.

However, studies have shown that the same technique can be used in another way to produce viable, healthy offspring which are either full clones or genetic chimeras of the adult whose skin cells were reprogrammed. Some scientists are concerned that its ease of use compared to the Dolly technique may now tempt maverick IVF doctors to try it on humans.

"It's unethical and unsafe, but the point is someone may be doing it today," said Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer of the American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology. "With this new technique we have the technology that can actually produce a child. If this was applied to humans it would be enormously important and troublesome.

"It raises the same issues as reproductive cloning and although the technology for reproductive cloning in humans doesn't exist, with this breakthrough we now have a working technology whereby anyone, young or old, fertile or infertile, can pass on their genes to a child by using just a few skin cells."

The technique could theoretically be used by infertile people who want their own biological children.

Experiments on laboratory mice have shown that it is now possible in principle to take a human skin cell, reprogramme it to its embryonic state and then insert it into an early human embryo so that the resulting child shares some of the genes of the person who supplied the skin tissue.

These offspring are known as chimeras - a genetic mix of two individuals - because some of their cells derive from the embryo and some from the skin cell that was reprogrammed to become an embryonic stem cell. (Natural human chimeras result from the fusion of two embryos in the womb and such people are usually normal and healthy.)

However, further studies on mice have shown that it is even possible to produce fully-cloned offspring that are 100 per cent genetically identical to the adult by using certain kinds of mouse embryos which only develop into the placenta of the foetus. In this case, the entire foetus develops from the embryonic skin cell injected into the embryo and so in effect becomes a clone of the adult animal.

None of the scientists working on cell reprogramming to produce induced pluripotent cells (iPS) - the embryonic stem cells - plan to use it for human reproductive medicine. Their main aim is to produce stem cells for the treatment of diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and stroke.

However, Dr Lanza said that the mouse experiments which his company has done are a clear demonstration of how the same technology could be used to produce cloned or chimeric babies by inserting iPS cells into early human embryos. This is not specifically banned in many countries.

"In addition to the great therapeutic promise demonstrated by this technology, the same technology opens a whole new can of worms," Dr Lanza said.

"There are no laws or regulations for this kind of thing and the bizarre thing is that the Catholic Church and other traditional stem- cell opponents think this technology is great when in reality it could become one of their biggest nightmares. I don't think people have thought the whole thing through. It is quite possible that the real legacy of this new technology is that it will be introducing the era of designer babies.

"If we had a few skin cells from Albert Einstein, you could have a child that is, say, 10 per cent or 70 per cent Einstein by just injecting a few of his cells into an embryo."

Source: Independent, The

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