Cloning Monkeys: Are Humans Next?

By SETH SANDRONSKY

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai recently published a paper detailing their cloning of monkeys by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). The breakthrough research, led by Qiang Sun, raises many questions both in and out of the laboratory.

What makes the monkey cloning a breakthrough? Do you recall the cloning of Dolly the Sheep with SCNT in 1996?

For the two macaques in China, this marks the first time researchers “successfully cloned primates using nonembryonic cells,” according to Smithsonian.com. Scientists are a step closer to cloning humans. Did someone say Brave New World by Aldous Huxley?

SCNT is a three-step process. It “involves removing the nucleus from the egg cell of one individual, and replacing it with the nucleus of a differentiated body cell from another individual. The reconstructed egg, which is implanted into a third individual, develops into a clone of the individual that donated the replacement nucleus.”

What do the cloned monkeys in China mean for research?

“On first glance my initial thinking is that I’m not sure why cloning monkeys would be a good thing to do as a researcher,” said Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D., at the UC Davis School of Medicine. “While some have speculated that cloned monkeys could have uses for genetic disease research or other kinds of studies such as in human cancer, I’m not convinced.”

Cloning two monkeys will have scant research impact, according to Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). “Other species have been cloned for two decades and they aren’t routinely used in experimentation,” she said. “Cloning comes with a 90 percent failure rate, which mean many animals suffer and die before even one cloned animal survives.

“In addition, given the 90 percent failure rate of all animal studies to result in human therapies, animal experimentation is the last place we should be putting our resources. Modern, animal-free methods are the future – and this will benefit both animals and humans who suffer from disease.”

With monkey cloning comes another question. How far away are we from scientists cloning living human beings?

“In theory,” said Prof. Knoepfler, “the reported epigenetic improvements (addition of the histone demethylase and the HDACi TSA, which as a scientist I find interesting) to the cloning process reported here could embolden some rogue to give that a try in humans.” If the past indicates the future, if there is commercial gain in sight, investors will fund such science.

What about the ethical questions of whether science should proceed with cloning? “There are also special bioethical considerations with work on non-human primates in general,” said Prof. Knoepfler, “and when you combine that with cloning, it raises the stakes further with more questions.”

Cloning monkeys and animal research generally is a path to avoid for compound reasons, according to PETA’s Guillermo. “It’s not only cruel and unethical;” she said, “it has an enormous price tag.”

On the latter issue stateside, funding for such science does not fall from the sky. Rather the capital comes from taxpayers’ pockets through the federal National Institutes of Health. Public money and private profit is the name of this game.

Seth Sandronsky is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2018

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