Could skin cells be used to clone superhumans?

China View
Posted: 2008-04-17 10:41:21

A recently developed technique that might eventually produce facsimiles of human embryonic stem cells from skin cells "opens a whole new can of worms" — the possibility of creating chimera humans — one researcher says.

    Scientists used the technique to create baby mice from the skin cells of adult animals. The approach, which reprograms skin cells and inserts them into an embryo, also was employed to revert human skin cells to a quasi-embryonic state. Presumably these virtual stem cells could be used for the same sorts of disease-curing research that embryos are used for.

    Overlooked, according to Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology in this article in the Independent, is the potential for making baby Albert Einsteins.

    "If we had a few skin cells from Albert Einstein, or anyone else in the world, you could have a child that is say 10 percent or 70 percent Albert Einstein by just injecting a few of their cells into an embryo," Lanza said. "It's unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today."

    The genetic makeup of such a child would be a mix of mother, father and the skin cell donor.

    Chimera children wouldn't make most ethicists happy. People are already concerned about British attempts to make cybrid embryos for research by putting human DNA into cow eggs. And the new technique, considered safer than the early method used to create the world's first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, raises the prospect of pushing genetics research toward a race of superhumans.