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Beyond the primate barrier

By successfully cloning monkey embryos and producing two lines of embryonic stem cells, scientists at the Portland-based Oregon National Primate Research Center have broken the primate barrier. Despite the success with cloning the sheep Dolly more than ten years ago and many other mammals including mice subsequently, cloning primate embryos had proved to be difficult. By cloning monkey embryos, which are closely related to humans, Shoukhrat Mitalipov has greatly contributed to our understanding of the processes involved, and has brought stem cell research one step closer to cloning of humans for studying and treating certain diseases. However, the process of producing embryos using skin cells taken from a nine-year-old male rhesus macaque and fusing them with unfertilised monkey eggs is highly inefficient — it required 304 eggs from 14 monkeys to produce two cell lines, the level of efficiency being less than one per cent. The encouraging part is that Dr. Mitalipov has been able to increase the number of embryos significantly by making a small but crucial change in the cloning process. This shows that embryonic stem cell science, still in its infancy, can reach a level of maturity where cloning human embryos for studying diseases and for therapeutic purposes is possible, provided of course scientists are allowed to work in a conducive environment, unfettered by laws born out of unwarranted apprehensions.

If the South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk’s fraudulent research prompted Dr. Mitalipov to shift his focus from reproductive cloning to producing embryonic stem cell lines, the journal Nature exercised abundant caution and took the unusual step of getting the scientist’s claims verified by an independent team before publishing the latest paper. When Science published two papers based on Hwang’s fraudulent research on human cloning, journals came in for severe criticism for not having in place a proper screening mechanism for detecting any fabrication of data. While Science considered providing “additional procedural safeguards”, Nature had indicated early last year the measures it proposed to take for detecting faked work. By instituting a process of independent pre-publication scrutiny, the journal has shown the way of making it difficult for the likes of Hwang to cheat the scientific community and deflect the course of research. It is for other journals to emulate it and for scientists themselves to set up self-regulatory mechanisms lest the basic fabric of scientific enterprise should be soiled.

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