PRESS RELEASE : Mouse Clones Die Young

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Looking at the ethics of technology for a New Millennium

PRESS RELEASE

Mouse Clones Die Young

The discovery by researchers in Japan that cloned mice die unusually young represents a further substantial nail in the coffin of any prospects for human reproductive cloning. Ten out twelve cloned mice died early, with immune system difficulties pneumonia or liver function, compared with one out of seven deaths with normally mated mice. This is another adverse, indicator to somatic cell cloning, which adds to deaths in pregnancy and soon after birth with cloned sheep and cattle, Dolly's arthritis, and an earlier French paper on problems with a clone of a clone. Since Dolly was announced in 1997, people have speculated whether animals cloned from adult tissue would exhibit problems because the embryo was already "old", or because the cells were not completely reprogrammed in creating the cloned embryo. Although there are studies where the length of telomeres suggested that cloning seems to make some animals "younger" and some "older", this is the first evidence of significant early death statistics. This is the first case where the life span of cloned animals has been examined - mice have a relatively short life span - and it reveals problems which could not be tolerated were reproductive cloning applied to humans.

This reveals the uncertainties in the basic science involved. One should be cautious about extrapolating from one mouse paper under one set of conditions to all types of animal cloning. The factors need to be investigated, in terms of the health and well being of the animals. For humans, a far greater degree of assurance of safety would be needed, and one would never know in advance. The use of a technique which gave a substantial risk of creating children with much shorter life spans would therefore be quite unethical.

It is not clear whether this would affect the prospects of taking stem cells from cloned human embryos for cell replacement therapy. These are late onset effects, whereas embryonic stem cells are taken very early in development. It indicates the importance of a thorough understanding of the various factors in cell differentiation and reprogramming of all types, before pinning too many hopes on the use of cloning, parthenogenesis or other unusual methods to derive embryos for producing stem cells.

What this study does is further to underline the folly of those seeking publicity and funding for their claims to promise cloned babies for infertile couples. As the Church of Scotland has said since 1997, there needs to ban human reproductive cloning worldwide, and to close loopholes in countries like the USA, where the procedure would still be legal if done in a private clinic or laboratory.

See the SRT Director's comments in BBC On-line Website 10 February 2002.

Further Information

SRT's report GM Animals, Humans and the Future of Genetics including GM primates

Press Release on Parthenogenesis and Cloned Humans

SRT's suite of pages on Human and Animal Cloning and Stem Cell issues

Our book Engineering Genesis on the ethics of animal and plant genetic modification

Tel: 0131-240 2250, Fax 0131-240 2239

Email: srtp@srtp.org.uk http://www.srtp.org.uk

or Church of Scotland Press Office 0131- 240 2243

Dr Bruce is Director of the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland, assessing ethical issues in technology for Scotland's national church. He chaired an expert working group on the ethics of genetic engineering in animals and plants, which produced the acclaimed book "Engineering Genesis", which examined the ethics of both xenotransplantation and animal cloning.