Chinese scientists have successfully cloned monkeys with the same technique used to produce Dolly the sheep all those years ago, removing a barrier to cloning other primates in the future. The scientists assure us that they’re not trying to clone humans, but I personally don’t believe them for one bloody second.
Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, two identical long-tailed macaques, were born eight and six weeks ago respectively, making them the first primates to be successfully cloned from a non-embryonic cell. The process involves transferring the nucleus of a cell into an egg which has had its nucleus removed – some serious science shit, if you ask me.
Previously, attempts to use this method on primates failed, leading some researchers to believe there was something fundamental about primate biology which was a barrier to a successful cloning. “It remains a very inefficient and hazardous procedure,” said Robin Lovell-Badge, a cloning expert at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
“This clearly remains a very foolish thing to attempt.”
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai absolutely assure us that there won’t be any funny business re: the cloning of human beings going on, but we’re not so sure:
Humans are primates. So [for] the cloning of primate species, including humans, the technical barrier is now broken. The reason […] we broke this barrier is to produce animal models that are useful for medicine, for human health. There is no intention to apply this method to humans.
Genetically identical animals are incredibly useful for clinical trials, as it eliminates the problem of test results being unreliable due to genetic variance between test subjects. Obviously, the idea of cloning creatures to use in pharmaceutical tests is ethically fraught – and boy do people have opinions about it!
Apparently, the two newborn monkeys are now being bottle-fed and are growing normally.
