MOSCOW, January 6, 2002 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Efforts to clone human beings will result in a "monster 99% of the time," Vyacheslav Tarantul, head of Russia's Molecular Genetics Institute, is quoted as saying in an article in the Times of Oman. Tarantul warns that "nearly all cloning efforts have led to horrific biological deformations".
"It is theoretically possible to clone a human being," he said, "but who will take responsibility if a monster is born? This risk exists in 99% of the cases," he told the Itar-Tass News Agency. "During cloning experiments on animals, we have found anomalies in most cases - cancer, in particular," Tarantul added.
The Jan. 5 New York Times Week in Review published an article by Gina Kolata favourable to so-called therapeutic cloning but which also acknowledged that scientists are currently very far from being able to clone a human embryo.
Kolata says a human embryo has not yet been cloned and that "In two reported attempts, one by scientists at Advanced Cell Technology and the other by scientists in China, the efforts utterly failed. The eggs died almost immediately and no cloned embryos were produced".
Dr. Richard Schultz, a developmental and reproductive biologist at the University of Pennsylvania says "It's just a big failure". He adds "Forget cloning, just to get human stem cells is not trivial …They are difficult to generate and difficult to maintain".
New York Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/weekinreview/05KOLA.html
For related coverage see:
ONE-QUARTER OF CLONED ANIMALS DIE WITHIN THREE MONTHS
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2002/nov/02111407.html
DOLLY SCIENTIST SAYS EVERY CLONED ANIMAL SUFFERS DEFECTS
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2002/apr/02042903.html