THE CLONING CHIEF

摘要

The hardest part of the cloning advance that Shoukhrat Mitalipov reported in May was not the experiment itself: it was the maze of red tape that came before it. Since 2007, Mitalipov, a reproductive biologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, had wanted to create cells with the potential to cure any number of diseases - patient-specific stem cells made from embryos cloned from a person's own skin cells. Beyond the technical difficulties, it was a tricky endeavour because it involves harvesting lots of human eggs and using them to create embryos that will then be destroyed.