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Originally published in Science Express on 28 March 2001
Science 30 March 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5513, p. 2552
DOI: 10.1126/science.1060463
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Policy Forum

DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY:
Don't Clone Humans!

Rudolf Jaenisch and Ian Wilmut

Successes in animal cloning have been accompanied by many failures: a few percent of nuclear transfer embryos survive to birth and, of those, many die soon after from serious developmental problems. Jaenisch and Wilmut oppose cloning humans, primarily because of the high failure rate and because the technology for detecting genetic abnormalities used in routine prenatal diagnosis cannot detect problems in epigenetic programming. Faulty epigenetic reprogramming can cause abnormal expression of any gene, which is consistent with the wide spectrum of developmental and physiological defects seen in cloned animals. Research into cloning specific cells for repair and regeneration of tissues would likely suffer from public reaction to human cloning failures.

R. Jaenisch is at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Department of Biology, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. I. Wilmut is at the Roslin Institute, Roslin, Midlothian EH25 9PS, UK.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Stem Cell Research: Why Medicine Should Reject Human Cloning.
W. P. Cheshire Jr, E. D. Pellegrino, L. K. Bevington, C. B. Mitchell, N. L. Jones, K. T. Fitzgerald, C. E. Koop, and J. F. Kilner (2003)
Mayo Clin. Proc. 78, 1010-1018
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The first half-century of nuclear transplantation.
J. B. Gurdon and J. A. Byrne (2003)
PNAS 100, 8048-8052
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Ethical Issues Regarding Human Cloning: a nursing perspective.
L. Dinc (2003)
Nursing Ethics 10, 238-254
   Abstract »    PDF »
What exactly is an exact copy? And why it matters when trying to ban human reproductive cloning in Australia.
B Gogarty (2003)
J. Med. Ethics 29, 84-89
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Cloning v. clowning.
D. Solter (2002)
Genes & Dev. 16, 1163-1166
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Cloned Cattle Can Be Healthy and Normal.
R. P. Lanza, J. B. Cibelli, D. Faber, R. W. Sweeney, B. Henderson, W. Nevala, M. D. West, and P. J. Wettstein (2001)
Science 294, 1893-1894
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Ectopic expression of a Chlamydomonas mt+-specific homeodomain protein in mt- gametes initiates zygote development without gamete fusion.
H. Zhao, M. Lu, R. Singh, and W. J. Snell (2001)
Genes & Dev. 15, 2767-2777
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Nuclear Cloning and Epigenetic Reprogramming of the Genome.
W. M. Rideout III, K. Eggan, and R. Jaenisch (2001)
Science 293, 1093-1098
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »

E-Letters:

Read all E-Letters

Don't Clone Human Embryos!
Rupert Beale
Science Online, 2 Apr 2001 [Full text]
Messages from Mammal Cloning
Lino Loi
Science Online, 5 Apr 2001 [Full text]
A Rebuttal for Human Cloning
Marco Burenko, MD
Science Online, 31 May 2001 [Full text]
Ethical Issues in Synthetic Life and Human Cloning: Insights from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
Alexander Salazar, Linda Barney Burke, Allan M. Burke
Science Online, 20 Sep 2001 [Full text]
Re: Ethical Issues in Synthetic Life and Human Cloning: Insights from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
Richard Rabicoff
Science Online, 17 Mar 2005 [Full text]

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