EVEN as the ink is drying on her latest paper, Hui Zhen Sheng’s work is provoking wildly different responses. It has been hailed as an important advance, questioned for its scientific rigour and sensationalised as a bizarre mixing of human and animal.
Sheng’s team at Shanghai Second Medical University claims to have created human embryonic stem cells by fusing adult human cells with rabbit eggs stripped of their nuclei – a form of cloning. What’s more, her team claims, the resulting cells can form a variety of human tissues, including muscle and nerve cells.
The goal is to create a new…
