ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997 TAG: 9703130062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The British embryologist who cloned a sheep suggested that cloning's benefits don't transcend into the human realm.
The world's best-known shepherd came to Washington on Wednesday and made a pitch for caution before Congress enacted legislation on human cloning.
Ian Wilmut, 52, the British embryologist who recently cloned an adult sheep, modestly accepted senators' praise and outlined his ground-breaking research.
When he heard that a U.S. scientist had predicted the cloning would win a Nobel Prize, he said, ``I'm flattered, but I actually think he's wrong.''
On the eve of the first meeting of President Clinton's Bioethics Advisory Commission, set up after the cloning triumph was announced, Wilmut told the Labor and Human Resources Committee that he personally had no plans to carry out human cloning.
``I have not heard of an application to copy a person that I thought was appropriate,'' he said. The only suitable applications of cloning were in raising farm animals or producing important human chemicals inside animals, he said.
Wilmut described how over a decade he had taken the genetic material from the cell of an adult sheep, turned its clock backward and re-inserted it into an empty sheep egg.
Then he did it over and over - 277 times. In 29 cases, the genetic material started multiplying to form embryos.
Only one survived: Dolly.
Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate and director of the National Institutes of Health, and Wilmut said they were both against human cloning, but they pointed out that such work was not imminent. ``In this situation, the discussion is running ahead of the science,'' Varmus said. Scientists ``are not ready to do human cloning,'' he said.
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