Scientists Report Cloning Monkey Embryos

The prospect of being able to clone human embyros efficiently for medical treatments has been raised by a technical breakthrough that has enabled scientists to make dozens of cloned embryos from adult monkeys for the first time.

Although primates have been cloned before using old fashioned "embryo splitting" methods, attempts to use the more efficient Dolly cloning technique have faced technical problems and saw a major setback with the controversy over fraudulent research in South Korea.

The new technique promises to revolutionise the efficiency by which scientists can turn human eggs into cloned embryos for use in so called therapeutic cloning to grow replacement cells and tissues for a vast range of treatments, though some commentators pointed out that while it looks promising, the team has not yet provided enough evidence to weigh up the full significance of today's work.

If confirmed, the research by Shoukhrat Mitalipov at the Oregon National Primate Research Centre in Beaverton marks the first time that scientists have been able to use the Dolly cloning method to create large numbers of cloned embryos from...