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New Cloning Technique Raises Fears of ‘Designer Babies’

Posted on: Monday, 14 April 2008, 09:00 CDT

A new type of cloning using skin cells has raised fears the procedure could one day be used with human embryos.  

Scientists who used the new procedure to create baby mice from adult skin cells of the animals found the procedure far more efficient than the older technique used to create Dolly the sheep.  The team also observed fewer side effects, which could make human use more acceptable. 

The baby mice were created by inserting skin cells of an adult animal into early embryos produced by in-vitro fertilization (IVF).  Some of the resulting offspring were partial clones but some were full clones, just like Dolly the sheep.  However, unlike the more complex Dolly technique, the new procedure is so efficient and simple that many worry it will be used by IVF doctors to help infertile couples have their own biological children.

One scientist said this weekend that an attempt to perform the technique on humans is now a very real possibility.

"It's unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today," said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology, in an interview with Britain’s The Independent.

"Cloning isn't here now, but 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," said Dr Lanza.

Advanced Cell Technology has pioneered many stem cell and cell reprogramming developments.

"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, straight or gay can pass on their genes to a child by using just a few skin cells," Dr Lanza said.

The new technique uses genetic reprogramming of skin cells so they revert to an embryonic-like state. The development was used on human skin cells for the first time last year, and was praised by President George Bush and the Catholic Church as an ethically acceptable way of producing embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy human embryos.

But the same technique has already been used in other ways to reproduce mice offspring that are either full clones or genetic "chimeras" of the adult mouse whose skin cells were reprogrammed.

The experiments on mice demonstrated that it is now possible, in theory, to use a human skin cell and reprogram it back to its embryonic state and then insert it into an early human embryo.  

The resulting offspring would share some of the genes of the person who provided the skin tissue, along with genes of the embryo's two parents. The resulting offspring are chimeras, a genetic mix of two or more individuals, because some of their cells come from the embryo and some from the skin cell. Technically speaking, such offspring would have three biological parents.

Human chimeras occur in nature when two embryos fuse in the womb and such people are often normal and healthy.    According to Dr Lanza, there is no reason to believe that a human chimera created by the new technique would not be healthy.

Moreover, studies in mice have found that it is possible to produce fully cloned offspring that are genetically identical to the adult. This was accomplished using a type of defective mouse embryo with four sets of chromosomes instead of the normal two. The "tetraploid" embryo only developed into the placenta of the fetus, and when it was injected with a reprogrammed skin cell the remainder of the fetus developed from this single cell to become a full clone of the adult animal whose skin was used.

None of the scientists involved in cell reprogramming to produce induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, as the embryonic cells are known, plan to use it for human reproductive medicine. Instead, they aim to produce stem cells for the treatments of conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's and stroke.

However, Dr Lanza said that the mouse experiments his company had done demonstrated how easily the technology could be used to produce cloned or chimeric babies by inserting iPS cells into human embryos. The procedure is not prohibited in many countries, where laws have not kept up with advancements in technology.

In the UK, the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill under consideration by  Parliament does not make reference to the iPS technique, but experts believe that the new law should make it illegal since it involves genetic modification of cells that become part of the embryo.

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

"At this point 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 in the end become one of their biggest nightmares," he said. "It is quite possible that the real legacy of this whole new programming technology is that it will be introducing the era of designer babies.

"So for instance if we had a few skin cells from Albert Einstein, or anyone else in the world, you could have a child that is say 10 per cent or 70 per cent Albert Einstein by just injecting a few of their cells into an embryo," he said.

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Image Courtesy Advanced Cell Technology

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On the Net:

Advanced Cell Technology

The Independent

Source: redorbit Staff and Wire Reports

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