Atlantean Mad Scientists Clone Human Embryo

(Editor's Note: The black magicians and mad scientists from Atlantis are back.And [hahaha] they're just "trying to help people who are sick.")

A group of scientists in Massachusetts claimed on Sunday they had cloned the first early human embryo, a step toward providing genetically matched replacement cells for patients with a wide range of diseases.

The scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, in Worcester, Massachusetts, say they have no immediate interest in transplanting such early embryos into a woman's womb to give birth to a cloned human being.

Several states, including California, have banned human cloning. Congress is considering such a ban.

"These are exciting preliminary results," said Dr Robert Lanza, one of the researchers at Advanced Cell Technology. "This work sets the stage for human therapeutic cloning as a potentially limitless source of immune-compatible cells for tissue engineering and transplantation medicine."

In findings published Sunday by The Journal of Regenerative Medicineand described online in Scientific American, the scientists said they had grown a six-cell human embryo.
They said they created the early embryo by injecting a very small cell with its genetic material into a woman's donated egg. In such cloning, the injected DNA often comes from a skin cell, but the researchers this time used a cumulus cell, which nurtures a developing egg.

In a separate experiment, the scientists showed they could push the development of human egg cells even further with a technique known as parthenogenesis.

They exposed 22 egg cells to chemicals that changed the concentration of electrically charged ions within them. Six eggs reprogrammed themselves to develop into early embryos known as blastocysts, which contain dozens of cells.

The scientists described the work as preliminary. Neither experiment has yet produced the coveted stem cells that grow inside an embryo and differentiate into other body tissues.

But the researchers described the work as an important step toward producing these stem cells to generate replacement cells as treatments for diabetes, heart disease, spinal injuries, and many other ailments.

In the wake of the announcement, the White House today reiterated US President George W Bush's "100 per cent'' opposition to human cloning in response to a medical breakthrough announced by a Massachusetts-based team of researchers.

The president has "made it clear 100 per cent that he is opposed to any type of human cloning'', White House spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise said.

Millerwise said the president gave his full support to a bill that passed the US House of Representatives to ban all human cloning and suggested the US Senate do the same.

``He supported the House legislation to ban human cloning, and although the Senate has a busy calendar, this shows why it is important for the Senate to act.''

ACT chief executive officer Michael West insisted today that any research to create cloned embryos would be applied to therapeutic, not reproductive, procedures.

"We are just trying to help people who are sick,'' West said. "We're not talking about a little embryo with hands and feet. We're talking about a cluster of cells.''

AP/AFP