What does China’s monkey breakthrough mean for human cloning?

Zhong-Zhong-CREDIT-Qiang-Sun-and-Mu-ming-Poo,-Chinese-Academy-of-Sciences

Qiang Sun and Mu-ming Poo, Chinese Academy of Sciences

STUFFED and displayed in an Edinburgh museum, Dolly the sheep seems a distant memory – like the technique used to create her more than 20 years ago. But with the news that Chinese researchers have cloned two macaques (see “Scientists have cloned monkeys and it could help treat cancer”), Dolly suddenly feels relevant again.

The long-awaited success revives not just memories of the sheep herself, but also the moral panic that greeted her. The fear then was that we had opened a Pandora’s box of cloned humans. Cloning primates seemingly brings that prospect even closer.

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It didn’t happen then and it probably won’t now. If anything, the breakthrough confirms what we already knew: that cloning humans from adult cells remains a formidable technical challenge. The macaques were created from fetal cells, not adult ones.

Nonetheless, there are still ethical implications. The Chinese team says its aim is to better understand harrowing human diseases. For that there is a good scientific rationale to the clones. Macaques are a better human analogue than mice, and cloning gives a level of precision that conventional breeding cannot.

But is there a moral case too? Generating meaningful results would require cloning and experimentation on a massive scale. Team leader Mu-ming Poo of the Shanghai Institute of Neuroscience is on record as saying he thinks primate research is worth it – as long as appropriate ethical standards are applied.

In reality, however, the creation of clones doesn’t alter the ethical equation. The procedure is still inefficient and legions of cloned macaques appear unlikely; meanwhile, China has embarked on a major research programme using conventionally bred and GM primates. The ethical debate is very much alive, but clones are not where the action is – at least for now.

This article appeared in print under the headline “More monkey business”

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