U.S. cloning lags behind, scientists say

SAN FRANCISCO – Just a few years ago, Michigan State University scientist Jose Cibelli was considered the leading expert on cloning human embryos to treat and study disease.

Now there’s no debate that the top cloning expert is Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University. On Thursday, Hwang again announced he had successfully cloned human embryos, this time extracting stem cells from embryos created using the DNA of sick and injured patients. It was the second time in a little more than a year that Hwang had successfully cloned. He remains the only acknowledged scientist to have done so.

Hwang is succeeding because South Korean government support helped him create an efficient cloning facility. In his lab, researchers trained in specialized individual tasks staff a high-tech assembly line that often operates 24 hours a day, Cibelli and others say.

In contrast, the few U.S. researchers eager to clone are left scrambling for funds and staff and must contend with legal vagaries as well as opposition from President Bush, who reaffirmed his position Friday with a veto threat.

No U.S. scientist is known to be actively cloning, though several have plans to start soon.

“We don’t have this issue as a priority. We have Iraq and the economy and the price of gas, and people aren’t thinking of cures for diseases,” said Cibelli, a co-author on the scientific paper Hwang published last year disclosing his first cloning success. “The Koreans have the complete support of their government.”

Cibelli was the lead scientist at Worcester, Mass.-based Advanced Cell Technology when that company announced in 2001 it had cloned human embryos. But that experiment was widely seen outside the company as a failure because Cibelli and colleagues could only coax the cells to divide a few times before they died.

The goal of so-called therapeutic cloning of human embryos is not to create babies but to extract stem cells, which are created in the earliest days after conception and give rise to the human body. Scientists hope to use the cells as replacement parts for diseased and injured organs.

Legitimate cloning researchers vow never to create a baby. They say their work will help them better understand diseases by watching them progress from the earliest moments. And Hwang himself said Friday that it will be years – maybe decades – before his team’s breakthroughs can benefit humans.