Scientist Who Cloned Dolly Gets Human Cloning License

Stem Cell Research & Cloning Forum

If I recall correctly, when this guy cloned Dolly the sheep it took him AGES to get it right. I assume it was like when they cloned Ripley in the Alien movies and all those clones in the room that weren't produced properly were all munted. I imagine that there were a lot of munted Dolly's before the real deal actually came out.

So now that he's been given a license to create embryos it could in theory take him years and years to actually create his first proper embryo. Although .... do you need a proper whole embryo to harvest stem cells? Can he harvest stem cells even if the embryo doesn't have a head or whatever?

The question is perhaps what is the reason for insisting on the use of stem cells derived from embryos? Why can't the research be carried out using other forms of stem cells?

Partly because embryonic stem cells are the most prolific source of them. Other sources yield a mere fraction of the number. Thus harvesting them in quantities sufficient for experimentation would be an more labor intensive process detracting from resources that might have been focused on the research itself reather than simply gathering the tools.

Are there other forms of stem cells? I thought that the embryonic stem cells are the best to work with because of their higher level of transmutability into any kind of cell, whereas other stem cells might not be able to differentiate into any other cell type, or at least getting the stem cells to differentiate would be more difficult? Is this incorrect?

Also, I understand that embryonic stem cells can last longer as unspecialized cells than other types of stem cells...

Both correct!