HOT PAPER: Creating Healthy, Long-living Cloned Animals
The Scientist August 20, 2001
Does imprinting make healthier human clones?
15 August 2001 9:30 EST
http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010815&story=1

Singapore Thinks Big: Genomics and Beyond
Issue 108
The Singapore Economic Development Board is determined to attract top-ranked researchers who can help to make their tiny island the biomedical and biotechnical hub of Asia. In this article, the author examines what it will take to set up a totally new, world-class genomics institute.
http://news.bmn.com/hmsbeagle/108/notes/feature3

California company offers to copyright DNA
14 August 2001 16:45 EST
Worried someone will try to clone you? For $1500, a new company in California claims it can protect your individuality by copyrighting your DNA. Balderdash, sceptics say.
http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010815&story=2

"I don't want people to see us as an 800-pound gorilla."
-CARL GULBRANDSEN, of the University of Wisconsin foundation that owns the patent on the human embryonic stem cell.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/17/health/genetics/17CELL.html?todaysheadlines

One more country has joined the ranks of animal cloners, the Chinese.
They say they've extracted DNA from a bear's egg and replaced it with DNA from a panda Panda's don't mate in captivity and so a laboratory in Beijing is studying cloning as a way to speed up breeding. Unfortunately the embryo did not grow. They are still years away from success in cloning pandas.
http://www.bioexchange.com/news/news_page.cfm?id=7144

Bagiano said there is widespread opposition to human cloning in Italy and throughout Western Europe for a variety of reasons.
"The majority of Italians think it is outrageous," he said. "Some are opposed for religious reasons, some for ethical reasons, and quite a few think monsters would come out of it. The big issue from a technical point of view is that from everything we know there will be a lot of failures. They say they can spot them and abort them all, but you don't raise 100 human beings and kill all of the defective ones in the fourth or fifth month. We cannot accept this."
He said it is possible that science may be ready for experiments like the one Dr. Antinori is discussing at some future date - perhaps 20 or 50 years from now - but that the planned attempt at human cloning is premature and dangerous.
http://www.dallasnews.com/science/442324_cloning_12int..html

'Human rights' patenting:

Patent allows creation of man-animal hybrid
http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,2763,403169,00.html

The top 10 patenters on the human body
http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,2763,397405,00.html

Envoys avoid gene patent issue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,2763,404899,00.html

Scientist calls for debate on human cloning
By Peter Foote
Our understanding of clone science is "too meagre" at present for human cloning to succeed, and many of the scientists involved are driven by money, according to a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who is attending a conference in Dublin.
"Inevitably the problems will be overcome, and it's then that the real ethical problems begin," said Prof Sir Joseph Rotblat, veteran atomic scientist turned peace campaigner. His comments follow an announcement by Prof Severino Antoniori in the US last week that he intends to start cloning human embryos before the end of the year.
Prof Rotblat resigned, on ethical grounds, from the second World War project to develop the atom bomb and then went on to be a founder member of the science ethics Pugwash Movement. He was speaking yesterday to an international audience of young science researchers at the International Conference of Physics Students at Dublin City University. These conferences are aimed at building relationships between young scientists around the world.
"Ethics are not absolute, they change with environment and community," Prof Rotblat told The Irish Times after his address. "Look at in-vitro fertilisation. This was originally considered unethical but is now widely accepted."
On cloning he said: "I feel that this, too, will become acceptable."
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2001/0814/hom18.htm

Pennsylvania Gov Allows Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; August 15, 2001

Harrisburg, PA -- After much internal debate, the administration of pro-abortion Gov Tom Ridge (R-PA) has decided that embryonic stem cell research can be conducted in Pennsylvania under one condition: The embryos must come from another state.

The state's abortion law of 1989 prohibits embryos from being destroyed in Pennsylvania for medical research.

The law was meant to regulate abortions, but the drafters of the law defined an unborn child as a fetus or a fertilized embryo. The law made destruction of a fertilized embryo for medical experimentation a felony.

The law was passed 10 years before it was learned that stem cells, which can become any specialized cell in the body, could be used to help find cures for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and a number of different cancers.
When President Bush announced last week that federal funds could not be used for new embryonic stem cell research, Ridge was put in a predicament. Bush's decision authorized federal research funds on stem cells already taken.

After consulting with the state Department of Health and attorneys for the governor's office, Ridge decided that stem cell research can be conducted in Pennsylvania only on the 60 stem cell lines identified by Bush, provided the stem cells are harvested from embryos in other states.

"We're continuing our review of the many issues surrounding the president's announcement and the implications of that announcement as it relates to the [Pennsylvania abortion law], and we're going to take our time to do a thorough review," said Amy Kelchner, spokesman for the state Department of Health. Pro-abortion state Sen. Allyson Schwartz, D-Philadelphia, introduced a bill yesterday in the state legislature that would clarify that stem cell research allowed by the federal government would be allowed in Pennsylvania, regardless of anything in the abortion control act.

"Leading bioethicists in Pennsylvania have predicted that our state's medical and scientific communities could suffer losses totaling billions of dollars if our institutions cannot participate in the stem cell research," she said. She noted that Ridge is spending $100 million to create three biotechnology greenhouses in the state and that to prohibit them from being involved in the federally funded stem cell research would be putting up a sign saying the state is "closed for business." Left unresolved at the moment is whether any other stem cell research would be allowed in the state, whether privately or publicly funded, or on other stem cell lines. Some officials in the Ridge administration note that the Pennsylvania abortion law was passed a decade before stem cells were discovered, and that the law was meant to regulate abortions, not medical research. As far as the state knows, no research on embryos has been conducted in the state since the abortion control act was passed 12 years ago.
"We don't know of any," said Kelchner. "It's something we would look into if it was brought to our attention."

RESEARCH IN CLONING MAY HELP FERTILTY TREATMENTS IN GENERAL
"Personally, I am opposed to human cloning because of the safety implications and risk involved, but the debate has to go forward, because there is a lot of valuable information which has come out of work relating to cloning."
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=010816011124&query=

Researchers debate human cloning
From the Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- A group that hopes to implant cloned embryos in 200 volunteers early next year, and researchers who say the technique is unsafe, gave conflicting arguments Tuesday before a scientific panel considering a moratorium on human cloning.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/sns-cloning-debate.story

COMMENTARY
We're All God's Creatures--Even If Cloned.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000064234aug08.story

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Fears of Biotech Color the Debate
I am appalled by your Aug. 2 editorial blaming scientists for their "own hubris" in having "brashly dismissed legitimate public concerns" as a cause for the outrageous House ban on human cloning. This is a classic case of blaming the victim for the acts of the perpetrator.
Stephen Speicher
Department of Biology
Caltech, Pasadena
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000064226aug08.story

BUSH'S STEM CELL DECISION
New Medical Frontiers Give Panel Chief Pause
Profile: Leon R. Kass, Bush's choice to lead stem cell advisory council, says science and society are at 'crossroads.'
By MEGAN GARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000065018aug10.story

Stemming their praise
17 August 2001 - Nature
Top US life sciences organizations have praised President Bush's decision to permit government funding only for stem cell research on existing cell lines, but it has been faint praise.
http://news.bmn.com/jscan/policy?uid=16384

Do telomeres help define the genes expressed during ageing?
16 July 2001
by Colin Michie colinm@easynet.co.uk Baur J. A et al. (2001). . Telomere position effect in human cells. Science, 292:2075-2077.
http://news.bmn.com/commentary/back?uid=5880

CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen offers some perspective on a report by researchers at Duke University that cloning "may be less complicated in humans than in sheep"
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/08

Genetic discovery has implications for cloning, cancer
August 9, 2001 Posted: 3:19 PM EDT (1919 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A newly discovered genetic process offers tantalizing clues for cancer researchers and reveals possible obstacles to cloning, scientists report.
Vienna, Austria.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/08/09/dna.switch/index.html

U.S. Firms Seek Mass Cloning of Chickens
Wednesday August 15 2:12 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Two U.S. companies are attempting to clone chickens on a huge scale, moving factory farming into a new era but alarming animal welfare activists, the New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010815/sc/science_cloning_chickens_dc_1.html

International bid to outlaw human cloning
August 8, 2001 Posted: 5:59 PM EDT (2159 GMT)
BERLIN, Germany -- France and Germany are attempting to persuade the United Nations to adopt an anti-human cloning treaty. .
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/08/08/un.clone/index.html

International opposition to cloning
August 7, 2001 Posted: 8:06 AM EDT (1206 GMT)
LONDON, England -- Italian professor Severino Antinori and U.S. researcher Panos Zavos are set to unveil details of their controversial plans for human cloning.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/08/07/clone.legislation/index.html

Opinion: Catholics can disagree on stem-cell research
The Pope may have inflated the moral status of embryo stem cells in recent pronouncements on this sensitive issue, argues Father Paul Surlis
Irish Times; Aug 17, 2001
Father Paul Surlis is retired professor of moral theology and social ethics at St John's University, New York
All Material Subject to Copyright
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=010817006015&query=c

Lawmakers Urged on Human Cloning
By Associated Press
August 15, 2001
SAN ANTONIO -- A scientist told a national conference of state lawmakers that banning human cloning would only push it into clandestine labs and out of regulators' control.
Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-lawmakers-cloning0815aug15.story

Scientists Try Unfertilized Egg as Source of Stem Cells
Researchers in L.A. and Massachusetts hope to grow embryos that would quell the debate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-000065462aug12.story

Species on Ice
DISCOVER Vol. 22 No. 9 (September 2001)
The high-tech, high-controversy attempt to save endangered animals with clones and surrogate moms
By Karen Wright
http://www.discover.com/science_news/index.html