Scientists to try to clone human embryos

AP via Yahoo News ^ | 6/6/06 | MALCOLM RITTER

[minus_273]

Stepping into a research area marked by controversy and fraud, Harvard University scientists said Tuesday they are trying to clone human embryos to create stem cells they hope can be used one day to help conquer a host of diseases.

"We are convinced that work with embryonic stem cells holds enormous promise," said Harvard provost Dr. Steven Hyman.

The privately funded work is aimed at devising treatments for such ailments as diabetes, Lou Gehrig's disease, sickle-cell anemia and leukemia. Harvard is only the second American university to announce its venture into the challenging, politically charged research field.

The University of California, San Francisco, began efforts at embryo cloning a few years ago, only to lose a top scientist to England. It has since resumed its work but is not as far along as experiments already under way by the Harvard group.

[minus_273]

its here follks. you knew it was going to happen someday. Anyone surprised harvard is doing this? regardless of what you think of stem cells (thats another debate that shouldnt be mixed into human cloning in my opinion since there are all types of stem cells), human cloning is scary. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it one more thing we have to worry about. Oh what is someone clones me..

[Fighting Irish]

We'll I can stay home with my wife on the weekends and do yardwork while I spend the weekends out fishing.

[R.W.Ratikal]

I wish them well and I hope that medical science continues to solve our health problems, but "cloning?"

Remember that cloning means to take a part of a living or dead being, such as a fingernail clipping or some other tissue or body part, and from it grow a complete new being that copies the original.

In Frank Herbert's science-fiction story "Dune" such copies were called "gholas."

Cloning, perpetual motion, cold fusion, and turning base metals into gold has been a dream of mankind for a long time. Keep dreaming.

[Fighting Irish]

I sort of joking ...... this whole idea of cloning humans is not good.

[minus_273]

you may say that, but we've seen cloned sheep, dogs and monkeys. This is an attempt at making clone humans to harvest organs from. The tech also means someone could clone you if they were able to get their hands on DNA they could use.