Double vision

摘要

Last week's announcement in Cell that a team in Oregon has successfully derived stem cells from a cloned human embryo raises many questions. Researchers must do their best to answer them. If they do not, then they risk a repeat performance of the misinformation, confusion and distraction that followed the birth in 1996 of the first mammalian clone, Dolly the sheep. Nonsense such as rumours that Saddam Hussein was going to copy himself, claims by the Raelian sect that it had produced a cloned girl named Eve and declarations by physicist and entrepreneur Richard Seed that he would produce hundreds of thousands of human clones generated an environment of fear that distracted from the real debate and set back research.The reaction to the Oregon team's success has been predictably mixed. Some have lauded the achievement, others have been less enthusiastic. "Barbaric," wrote one critic. Another called it a "terrible injustice"