Cloning 101

If the U.S. doesn’t move quickly to regulate the new trend of interspecies cloning, it’s safe to say that researchers will experiment until the cows come home.

In the U.K., some already have. Since human eggs are in short supply, researchers in Britain applied for permission to create human-cow embryos.

In America, scientists are not even required to ask for permission–because no such restrictions exist! At the University of Nevada, Professor Esmail Zanjani has joined the ranks of Harvard and Yale scientists who have taken advantage of the lack of government scrutiny.

This week, Zanjani announced that his team has created the world’s first human-sheep chimera, whose cellular make-up is 15% human and 85% animal. Although Zanjani promises that the technique will give rise to a new source of organ donors, there’s no telling what complications will result from the hybrid.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of ethical complications in this amoral frontier.

Tony Perkins heads the Family Research Council. This article was excertpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.