Scientists Say They've Cloned A Monkey

NEW YORK (AP) -- American scientists say they've cloned embryos from a 9-year-old male monkey, and have derived stem cells from them.<br/><br/>In doing so, they reached a long-sought goal that may

Wednesday, November 14th 2007, 2:30 pm

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) -- American scientists say they've cloned embryos from a 9-year-old male monkey, and have derived stem cells from them.

In doing so, they reached a long-sought goal that may someday lead to new treatments for people.

The work is published online in the journal Nature. Just to make sure, the publication took the unusual step of asking another team of researchers to verify the work before it was published.

Several years ago, there was a stem cell research claim from South Korea that proved to be a fraud.

The latest advance is reported from the Oregon National Primate Research Center. The scientists combined DNA from skin cells of the monkey with unfertilized monkey eggs that had their own DNA removed.

The eggs were then grown into early embryos, from which stem cells were removed.

The researchers warn that even if the procedure could be used to produce human stem cells, it's far too inefficient to be used in medicine.