CNN logo Navigation Infoseek/Big Yellow Pathfinder/Warner Bros Tech banner IBM AS/400 rule WILL HEADLESS HUMAN CLONES GROW ORGANS IN 10 YEARS? 'Human Cloning' graphic October 19, 1997 Web posted at: 8:39 p.m. EDT (0039 GMT) LONDON (AP) -- Headless human clones will be used to grow organs and tissues for transplant surgery in the next five to 10 years, a leading authority on the ethics of human cloning predicted Sunday. Dr. Patrick Dixon, author of "The Genetic Revolution," which forecast the cloning of animals, made the prediction after The Sunday Times reported that British scientists have created a frog embryo without a head. Scientists believe the technique used to create the headless frogs could be adapted to grow human organs such as hearts, kidneys, livers and pancreases in an embryonic sac living in an artificial womb, the paper said. Many scientists believe human cloning is inevitable following the July 1996 birth of Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal. She was created at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh using cells from a sheep's udder. "I predict that there will be great pressure to combine cloning technology with the creation of partial fetuses, missing heads, arms or legs as organ factories for tomorrow's people," Dixon told the British news agency, Press Association. "These will be developed on an experimental level somewhere in the world in countries where there is little or no gene legislation within the next 5-10 years because of the overwhelming demand," he said. "The demand is there, the technology is almost there as well," he said. Dixon called for an urgent global biotechnology summit to examine every aspect of genetics, and provide the foundations for international agreements. International inconsistencies on various aspects of genetic engineering, including human cloning, urgently need to be ironed out, he said. "Genetic engineering is a very exciting technology, it has the power to feed the world, cure disease but you do have to ask fundamental questions before it is too late," Dixon said. "The headless frog embryo is another example of the way the technology is racing far ahead of public understanding," he said. "We must get the thinking in place which looks over the horizon beyond today's headlines to what tomorrow will bring," Dixon said. "Scientists have been making up the rules as they go along." Genes manipulated to suppress frog's head Jonathan Slack, professor of developmental biology at Bath University, told The Sunday Times that he created headless frog embryos by manipulating certain genes -- and used the same technique to suppress development of a tadpole's trunk and tail as well. The headless frog embryos have not been allowed to live longer than a week because under British government rules, embryos are not considered animals until they are a week old, the paper said. Slack believes the breakthrough could be applied to human embryos because the same genes perform similar functions in both frogs and humans, The Sunday Times said. The newspaper said the lamb and frog techniques could be combined so that people needing transplants could have organs "grown to order" from their own cloned cells. These organs would exactly match the patient and there would therefore be no danger of rejection. It would also ease the shortage of organs for transplant, The Sunday Times said. Slack told the paper that using intact human embryos would not be possible because they would have to be killed. "It occurred to me a half-way house could be reached," he was quoted as saying. "Instead of growing an intact embryo, you could genetically reprogram the embryo to suppress growth in all the parts of the body except the bits you want, plus a heart and blood circulation." Growing parts of human embryos to cultivate organs could bypass many legal restrictions and ethical concerns, because without a brain or central nervous system the organisms may not technically qualify as embryos. Professor: 'No ethical issues' Lewis Wolpert, professor of biology as applied to medicine at University College London, called Slack's suggestions sensible and feasible. "There are no ethical issues because you are not doing any harm to anyone," The Sunday Times quoted him as saying. But Oxford University animal ethicist Professor Andrew Linzey told the newspaper: "It is morally regressive to create a mutant form of life." "It's scientific fascism because we would be creating other beings whose very existence would be to serve the dominant group," he was quoted as saying. Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. rule CNN Plus * Message Board: Cloning Health Special: Cloning Related stories: * Report: Cloned sheep has human gene - July 24, 1997 * Embryo splitting caught in cloning controversy - June 25, 1997 * Scientists grow monkeys from cloned embryos - March 2, 1997 * Firms team up to make cloned cattle with special milk - October 7, 1997 Related sites: Note: Pages will open in a new browser window * Genzyme Transgenics * Genetics and Ethics - Biomedical Ethics Unit, McGill University * Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy - Animals as Inventions: Biotechnology and Intellectual Property Rights * Genetic Engineering Home Page External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive. _________________________________________________________________ Infoseek search ____________________ ____ ____ _________________________________________________________________ rule Watch these shows on CNN for more sci-tech stories: CNN Computer Connection | Future Watch | Science & Technology Week rule Message Boards Sound off on our message boards You said it... 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