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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, March 29, 2001



UH scientists warn of cloning dangers

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

On the first day of congressional hearings into the viability and morality of human cloning, members of the University of Hawai'i scientific team that cloned generations of mice said, based on their research, cloning may never be completely safe.

Researchers suspect one defect in clones is obesity, as shown in the mouse on the right, a clone of the other mouse.

Dr. Ryuzo Yanagimachi • University of Hawai'i

Ryuzo Yanagimachi, who runs the Institute for Biogenesis Research at UH, said cloning may never be effective enough to reproduce a viable strain of farm animals, let alone a human being.

Scottish researchers cloned the world's first mammal, a sheep named Dolly, in 1997. In July 1998 the UH team led by Yanagimachi stunned the scientific world by announcing they had cloned not one, but generations of mice, starting with a single mouse named Cumulina.

Yesterday's hearing was called by Rep. James C. Greenwood, R-Pa., to consider the need for a law banning human cloning. President Bush has indicated he will support such restrictions.

"Although publicly funded human cloning research is prohibited, privately funded human cloning research is not," said Greenwood, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigation subcommittee.

Panos Zavos, a fertility specialist who recently left the University of Kentucky, told the subcommittee that he expects to create a human clone within two years in a laboratory outside the United States.

"Those who want to ban this (cloning) would have stopped Neil Armstrong from flying to the moon and banned Columbus from discovering America," he said.

Other witnesses condemned the human project as immoral and irresponsible. Members of the scientific team in Hawai'i agreed.

"We have not perfected (cloning) in animals, so what are we doing in trying to clone a human? None of us in the field want to see this happen," said Stefan Moisyadi of Honolulu, director of research at Yanagimachi's Institute for Biogenesis Research. "What are we going to do with a human that is born and can't breathe properly, or its immune system is so weak it can't make antibodies, or it has a malformed head?"

Moisyadi said the field of cloning would be set back for years should something go wrong. "These people are profiteers, trying to ride on somebody else's science and get the publicity," he said.

Since Dolly, made from an adult cell that had been reprogrammed to start anew, scientists have been cloning animals — cows, sheep, goats and mice — with some regularity.

While there have been successes, the researchers have also been stunned by the number and severity of birth defects, lost fetuses and even mothers of cloned animals that die before the fetus is born.

The problem, Miosyadi said, is that something goes wrong in the process of reprogramming — when the genes in a cell are prompted to launch the life process.

The egg into which a cell nucleus is injected to deprogram the cell cannot always complete that task, Moisyadi said. The result among the more than 200 mice cloned in Honolulu was a shock.

"I thought the cloned animal was born perfect, but it was not perfect," Yanagimachi said.

Under the circumstances, scientists could end up cloning a strain of cattle that would look like their "parents," but might all be wiped out instantly by a single, obscure disease, he said.

Trying to clone humans under these conditions, he said, "is out of the question."

The high mortality rate of fetuses was known immediately, Yanagimachi said. Despite the fact that mice are supposed to be one of the easiest animals to clone, 98 percent of the cloned embryos were dying of some "development problem," usually during pregnancy or shortly after being born.

"So something must be very wrong in the majority of cloned embryos," Yanagimachi said.

A tendency toward adult obesity in some strains was discovered and reported a year ago.

"Even the ones that survived were not trouble-free, and this obesity is one example," he said

Researchers are about to publish findings of abnormality in the development of some organs among cloned mice that causes death.

"Many of them are dying of lung troubles," Yanagimachi said.

Yanagimachi said it is time for cloning experts all over the world to confer and make clear the possible dangers of cloning.

Humans want their children to be brighter, happier and more sociable than the parents are, the scientist said.

"Cloning cannot serve this purpose."

Gannett News Service and The Dallas Morning News contributed to this report.