SEOUL, South Korea--A South Korean medical team said Wednesday it
had made an important advance in the cloning of human cells to create replacement
organs.
Using what is known as the "Honolulu technique," the South Korean team
said it cultivated a human embryo in its early stage from a single cell
implanted in a woman's ovum.
The technique has drawn worldwide attention since University of Hawaii
researchers announced in July that they used it to create more than 50
carbon-copy mice.
The South Korean team was headed by Dr. Lee Bo-yeon, a professor
at the fertility clinic of Kyonghee University Hospital in
Seoul.
"Our experiment marked the first time that the more reliable cloning technology
has been applied to human cells and might make human cloning more feasible,"
Lee told The Associated Press.
Lee's team first removed the genetic nucleus of an egg donated by a woman
and then used a tiny needle to fill the empty egg with the nucleus of one
of her body cells.
It then cultivated the egg until it grew and cleaved into four embryonic
cells, a step or two before developing into a human fetus.
Lee's team stopped there because a resolution adopted by South Korean scientists
in 1993 banned taking the experiment farther.
The next step would have been implanting the egg into a woman's womb and
letting it grow into stem cells -primordial cells from which all of a human's
bodily tissues and organs develop.
Lee said the 1993 resolution, while not legally binding, forced his team
to stop short of doing what U.S. scientists have already achieved in developing
stem cells.
University of Wisconsin scientists have reported success in growing stem
cells in a dish using clumps of cells grown from fertilized eggs. Scientists
from Johns Hopkins also grew stem cells from egg cells taken from aborted
fetuses.
Lee's team said its technique was more reliable than the one used to create
Dolly the sheep, which other laboratories so far have failed to duplicate.
In initially announcing the results of the research on Tuesday, Lee said
a team of British scientists previously succeeded in a similar experiment.
But he said Wednesday he may have been misinformed.
Britain has laws banning research into human reproductive cloning.
"The cloning of human embryos should be encouraged for scientific research
to create replacement hearts and other organs. "It will eventually help
human beings," Lee said.
He said his work needed more research before being reported to international
medical journals. So far, there have been no peer reviews of his claims,
Lee said.
Cultured stem cells, scientists say, could produce new heart cells, or
new insulin-producing cells for the treatment of diabetes.
Following the announcement by the South Korean scientists, about two dozen
religious and civic activists held a rally in front of Kyunghee Hospital,
shouting for discontinuation of the "inhuman research."
One protest sign read: "Who am I? I don't want to be a cloned human being."
The announcement comes as South Korea's Parliament is pushing legislation
banning cloning of human cells except for research on cancer or other diseases.
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1998 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved