Cloning a big risk: scientists

NEW YORK - Scientists say growing evidence that cloning a healthy animal is difficult should give pause to anyone thinking of cloning humans.

The New York Times interviewed scientists familiar with animal cloning experiments. They said that clones often had serious developmental problems.

In one example cited, some mouse clones appeared to develop normally until an age that would be the human equivalent of about 30 years.

The mice then abruptly grew fat, even obese.

"Cloned embryos have serious developmental and genetic problems," said Ryuzo Yanagimachi, the first researcher to clone mice in 1998 and study the consequences in his University of Hawaii laboratory.

He said the developmental and genetic problems usually killed the mice before birth.

Animal clones often had severe problems such as developmental delays, heart defects and malfunctioning immune systems, the Times quoted the scientists as saying.

Sheep, mice, cows, pigs and goats were among the mammals cloned.

Two fertility experts, Panayiotis Zavos, of the Andrology Institute in Lexington, Kentucky, and Severino Antinori, a fertility doctor in Rome, say they want to clone a human.

But the report said scientists had discovered that fewer than 3 per cent of all animal cloning efforts were successful.

- REUTERS

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