CGS-authored
The possible has become the probable. A human embryo has been cloned by using a woman's egg cells and a man's skin cells. Biology and morality have crossed paths again.
And so has a question for the ages: Just because you can do it, does it make it right?
California voters gave a green light to this kind of research - known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT for short - when they approved the historic $3 billion stem cell funding initiative in November 2004. Proposition 71 said state-funded researchers could clone human embryos for the purpose of deriving stem cells as long as the embryos aren't kept beyond 12 days.
Still, the announcement from Stemagen Corp. in La Jolla was met by surprise from Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a biotech watchdog group in Oakland.
"Yikes," Darnovsky said yesterday when told about the development.
While the Center for Genetics and Society supports some forms of embryonic stem cell research, it opposes cloning.
The way Darnovsky sees it, it's expensive, it turns...