Human cloning still long way off: experts
Rael, the leader of the Raelians who claim to have cloned several human babies (Pic: The Skeptics Dictionary)
Science experts meeting in Germany have lashed out at 'charlatans' who claim to have reproduced human embryos and said that human cloning, while theoretically possible, is still a long way off.
"These charlatans cause plenty of problems and misunderstandings," muttered Dr Rudolf Jaenisch in front of a row of photographs by the Raelian sect.
Jaenisch, a German geneticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is one of about 40 specialists from around the world who have just ended a three-day conference in Berlin aimed at drawing up cloning regulations.
He said that increasing claims of cloned babies, the most recent made by the shadowy sect, were sparking "emotional reactions against cloning in general."
The Raelians and their linked scientific group Clonaid attracted media attention and widespread criticism in December after claiming to have produced the world's first cloned baby, Eve. Since then the group says two more have been born, but it has still not delivered any proof or allowed DNA tests to confirm its claims.
While the conference in Berlin, which ended on Friday, noted the therapeutic and even reproductive applications of cloning, the experts were unanimous: humans cannot yet be cloned.
"It has not been proved that a human clone could, at the moment, pass beyond the stage of six cells," said Dr Harry Griffin, director of Scotland's Roslin Institute where 'Dolly' the sheep was produced by cloning.
The world's most famous sheep was 'born' in 1996 after 276 attempts and was put down in February suffering from an incurable lung disease. Questions remain over whether she had aged prematurely. Griffin pointed out that the complexity of the human chromosome would make it that much more difficult to clone people.
To date, five species of mammal – sheep, mice, rabbits, pigs and cows – have been successfully cloned, but numerous attempts to achieve similar results with primates have failed.
"There is no theoretical reason why reproductive cloning will never happen," said French expert Professor Axel Kahn. "We will have to show plenty of compassion [for future cloned babies and] where possible, limit any crimes and chase down the criminals [producing them outside of the law]."
In November 2002, the United Nations tried to adopt an international convention banning reproductive human cloning, but no consensus was reached. Some countries already have this kind of legislation, others also want to ban therapeutic cloning, whereby cells from human embryos are used for their special regenerative properties.
German experts have even been trying to create nerve tissue to treat people with brain damage, but Kahn warned that cells made this way "could be very carcinogenic". Even if a cloning technique emerges that is safe and reliable, human genetic duplication is viewed with abhorrence because it evokes Nazi-style eugenics, with the nightmare implications of a master race that is fit to be cloned and underlings who are not.
Indeed cloning on a large scale would be bad news for human evolution, because it would encourage stagnation rather than a dynamic mixing of the gene pool. Homo sapiens would mark time as a species.
