ETHICAL objections to harvesting cells from embryos face a challenge from the results of experiments on cloned frog embryos. Though the embryos were severely abnormal, and so were doomed to die, they still yielded useful cells. If the findings are repeated in human embryos, it could mean that valuable cells for therapy or research could be extracted from abnormal human embryos.
Many people object to destroying embryos that could eventually develop into a human. But an embryo destined to die within days is not a potential human, argues John Gurdon of the Wellcome Cancer Research Institute in Cambridge. “If an…
