Quotes
Quotes Concerning Cloning
- "It's important to remember just
what
she did contribute. She
made biologists think totally different about the ways cells develop
for all of the different tissues. The experiments that led to her birth
are one of the things that are making people think very differently
about how to produce cells to treat Parkinson's disease and other
unpleasant
diseases." --Ian Wilmut,
leader of the team that created
Dolly, concerning the issue of her death.
- "The real issue is what Dolly
died
from, and whether it was
linked to premature ageing. She was not old--by sheep standards--to
have been put down."
--Dr. Patrick Dixon, expert on
ethics of human cloning.
- "We must await the results on the
post-mortem on Dolly in order
to assess whether her relatively premature death was in any way
connected with the fact that she was a clone. If there is a link, it
will provide futher evidence of the dangers inherent in reproductive
cloning and the irresponsibility of anybody who is trying to extend
such work to
humans." --Professor Richard
Gardner, chair of the Royal Society working group
on stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.
- "The most likely thing is an
infection
which causes a slow
progressive illness and for which there isn't an effective treatment.
Sadly, we have had that in some of the sheep in the farm, so that's the
most likely explanation, but we don't know." --Ian Wilmut, leader of the team that
created Dolly.
- "The most likely thing is she
caught it
from the sheep and it's
an unfortunate result of having to be housed in order to give her
security and so that we could observe her. Clearly, the whole group is
very upset and
sad." --Dr. Harry Griffin, of
the
Roslin Intitute.
- "New technologies are frequently
controversial, and i think
people right away think 'Oh my God, we're going to clone a human being"
but that is not what this is about. It will be sad and tragic if this
does not go
ahead." --Mary Ann Liebert,
publisher of
the online journal E-Biomed,
concerning the future of genetic research.
- "The world has to come to
grips that the cloning technology is almost here." --Panos Zavos,
spokesman for a group of european
scientists.
- "Nobody
should get a story until they produce evidence. No matter how telegenic
they are, no matter how many Star Fleet Command uniforms they have, if
you don’t show up with a baby or a parent or a DNA test, or some
witnesses who are credible, you shouldn’t have a story." --Arthur Caplan
(commenting on the Clonaid Raelian claims of the first
cloned baby).
-
"…Ministers in Britain have too easily swallowed the line
that cloning human embryos is essential to medical progress. It is not.
…Like stuck records, ministers and policy makers continue to enthuse
about therapeutic cloning even though the majority of bench scientists
no longer think it's possible or practicable to treat patients with
cells derived from cloned embryos. They have already moved on to
investigating the alternatives."--Editorial, "Brave New Medicine",
New Scientist, Dec 1, 2001
-
"The idea of therapeutic cloning, which offers the
potential of growing replacement tissues perfectly matched to their
recipients, is falling from favour. But there are alternatives…So to
the casual observer, it may come as a surprise that many experts do not
now expect therapeutic cloning to have a large impact. Aside from
problems with the supply of human egg cells, and ethical objections to
any therapy that requires the destruction of human embryos, many
researchers have come to doubt whether therapeutic cloning will ever be
efficient enough to be commercially viable. 'It would be astronomically
expensive,' says James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin in
Madison. Peter Mountford, chief scientific officer of Stem Cell
Sciences, believes these problems can be overcome, and argues that it
is too early to give up on therapeutic cloning-but his has become a
minority view."--Peter Aldhous, "Can they rebuild us?", Nature 410,
622-625; April 5, 2001
-
"But the idea of 'therapeutic cloning' seems to be on the
wane. By creating cloned human blastocysts, some experts have argued
that it should be possible to derive ES cells perfectly matched to
individual patients. But most now believe this will be too expensive
and cumbersome for regular clinical use."--Peter Aldhous, "A world
of difference", Nature 414, 838; Dec 20/27, 2001
-
"John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University also says that
many scientists 'feel there are ways of getting around the rejection
problem without the nuclear transfer paradigm.'"--Constance Holden,
"Would cloning ban affect stem cells?", Science 293, 1025; Aug 10, 2001
-
"The poor availability of human oocytes, the low
efficiency of the nuclear transfer procedure, and the long
population-doubling time of human ES cells make it difficult to
envision this therapeutic cloning becoming a routine clinical
procedure…"--Odorico JS, Kaufman DS, Thomson JA, "Multilineage
differentiation from human embryonic stem cell lines," Stem Cells 19,
193-204; 2001
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