Cloned monkeys born in Chinese lab pave way for new medical studies

Two cloned macaque monkeys are presently exploring the confines of an incubator, built for human babies, inside a research laboratory run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Primates have been cloned before, but this is the first time monkeys were duplicated using the same technique — called somatic cell nuclear transfer —that scientists used to clone Dolly the sheep, in 1996. 

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Beyond the obvious scientific achievement — whose results were published today in the journal Cell — the important advancement here is that these scientists plan to produce more cloned monkeys in the coming months, and believe they can make primate cloning relatively cheap. The scientists underscore that these genetically identical animals, akin to identical human twins, are to be used only to advance human medicine. Read more...

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