LifeSiteNews.com

Thursday November 14, 2002



ONE-QUARTER OF CLONED ANIMALS DIE WITHIN THREE MONTHS

New Zealand Laboratory Records


SHARE: E-mail E-MAIL  Print PRINT     

WELLINGTON, November 14, 2002 (LifeSiteNews.com) - New Zealand's government-owned AgResearch, a laboratory that conducts cloning experiments with livestock, is reporting that one-quarter of the beasts die within three months.

The death rate of cloned calves between birth and weaning has been 24%, according to news reports, compared with about 5% in normal calves. Of the 24%, about 2% were put down because of chronic sickness and the rest died "unaided" -- 5% after weaning compared with about 3% among calves born normally.

Dr. David Wells, the institute's director of cloning, says, "Errors in the pattern of gene expression" had resulted in some deformities that made the animals "not viable at birth." The "vast majority" of cloned calves, he claims, were delivered naturally from surrogate mothers. Some are aborted, while mothers have also had to be slaughtered when their cloned foetuses grew too large for birth ("large offspring syndrome") and where a caesarian was not viable.

For local coverage see:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3004259&thesection=news&thesu...

Back to Top Back to Top

SHARE: E-mail E-MAIL  Print PRINT     



MORE NEWS: LifeSiteNews.com Home Page  Last 10 Days   Archives   Special Reports

Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.