Dolly creator gets licence to clone human embryos

Britain on Tuesday granted the scientist, who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, a licence to clone human embryos "for medical research", triggering an outcry among opposition groups. Ian Wilmut, from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, dismissing fears that his work would lead to reproductive cloning, said the licence would allow him and his team to study the fatal 'motor neuron disease' (MND).
"Our aim will be to generate stem cells, purely for research purposes," said Wilmut, who will also work with researchers from King's College, University of London.
It is only the second time that Britain's fertility body, the 'Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority', has issued a licence for therapeutic cloning research, which has been legal in the country since 2001.
"Human beings have been changing the world around them for a very long time, in general to good effect," Wilmut told a news conference in Edinburgh.
"I think that the majority of people support this type of research and hope it will be successful in helping to bring useful treatment for diseases like motor neuron disease," he said. Wilmut's team plans to extract stem cells from patients with MND and implant them in unfertilised eggs to create cloned embryos.
They will then harvest stem cells from the embryos to grow motor neurones --the long nerves which transmit electrical messages from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles. The technique will not be used to correct the disease, which is caused by the death of motor neurones and affects about 5,000 people in Britain, but the study of the cells could help to develop future treatments.
Wilmut shot to fame in July 1996 when he created Dolly the sheep, the first mammal ever to be cloned from an adult cell. Dolly was put down two years ago this month after she developed a lung disease.
Critics of embryo cloning fear that Britain is one step closer to authorising the creation of human clones, but Wilmut dismissed such fears. "This is not reproductive cloning in any way. The eggs we use will not be allowed to grow beyond 14 days," he said.