Aggregated News
Of the small number of Americans who have any idea what therapeutic cloning is, the majority likely believes it essential for stem-cell therapies to succeed. That is not necessarily true.
Therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, will not be the route to successful stem-cell therapies, many scientists say. In fact, if therapeutic cloning were vital, it would make stem-cell therapies prohibitively expensive.
That doesn't mean therapeutic cloning is altogether useless. Researchers believe they can learn a great deal about disease and perhaps find cures by studying stem cells derived from the clones of patients with diabetes, cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other ailments. But those cells will likely be a conduit to therapies, not therapies themselves, at least not until scientists develop much more efficient therapeutic cloning methods.
"The value of nuclear transfer is not for cell therapy, it's to do molecular research to figure out how genetic disease is manifest," said Tom Okarma, CEO of Geron, a biotech company in Menlo Park, California, that has studied stem cells since 1995. "When you inject nuclear transfer, (stem-cell therapy)...
Therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, will not be the route to successful stem-cell therapies, many scientists say. In fact, if therapeutic cloning were vital, it would make stem-cell therapies prohibitively expensive.
That doesn't mean therapeutic cloning is altogether useless. Researchers believe they can learn a great deal about disease and perhaps find cures by studying stem cells derived from the clones of patients with diabetes, cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other ailments. But those cells will likely be a conduit to therapies, not therapies themselves, at least not until scientists develop much more efficient therapeutic cloning methods.
"The value of nuclear transfer is not for cell therapy, it's to do molecular research to figure out how genetic disease is manifest," said Tom Okarma, CEO of Geron, a biotech company in Menlo Park, California, that has studied stem cells since 1995. "When you inject nuclear transfer, (stem-cell therapy)...