Cloning Dolly, How and Why?
Pre-Lecture Interview With the Marine Biological Laboratory:
MBL: Could you tell us a little bit about what you hope people get from the lecture this evening?
Keith Campbell: What I want to try to explain to people this evening is a little bit of the history and a little bit of the science behind cloning. But more importantly, what I would hope they go away with, is some of the positive uses of this technology. We are not all mad scientists. We are not all looking to clone ourselves. The positive benefits that this may have for human therapeutic medicine and improving the quality of life for people with certain genetic disorders.
MBL: What kind of questions should it raise in people's minds?
KC: I think the big question it raises in everyone's mind nowadays is, we are one step from the cloning of animals. We are now in the cloning of humans for reproductive purposes. I personally am completely opposed to reproductive cloning, but I think people now fear that we are asking governments around the world to allow us to do some human cloning and to develop embryos for very short periods in dishes to use for therapeutic purposes. I think people feel that will open the floodgates to allowing us to start cloning humans. But there is no good reason for cloning a human being.
MBL: Would this be the way you would do it if you were going to clone a human being, or are there other better, more effective ways?
KC: Well, let's just put this in context first. The animals we have produced are not true clones, in the first instance. They are genomic copies. But this would be the way that you produce a so-called clone with the technology that we have available at the moment..
MBL: And there was, as I recall, a high level of risk and failure.
KC: There is a very high level of failure. You look at the (inaudible) and all the species that have been cloned at the moment&the development of embryos to term is probably about 2%.
But there are losses all the way through the process. We lose embryos very early on during embryo development, and then we lose fetuses all the way through gestation. And we have animals born that just drop dead at birth. We haven't gotten to the bottom of the causes for that as yet. So, although we can clone animals by this technology, it is in its infancy.
The other amazing thing about this technology, [is that it] gives us a tool to start understanding the processes of normal human development, an extra tool that may help us understand some of the problems that occur during normal development in humans, for instance, particularly in the cases of chromosomal abnormalities that cause childhood cancers and childhood leukemias.
MBL: What about the process as it relates to embryonic stem cells, bone marrow stem cells, adult stem cells?
KC: We are in a very exciting time because we are finding stem cells, [an] undifferentiated population of cells, which have the ability to form different cell types. We are moving in a time where we possibly can use these for transplantation to humans to cure certain diseases such as Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, some of the diseases that have been sugges
Nuclear transfer would allow us to take a cell from an individual, make an embryo, and to turn the embryo into stem cells, and then transplant them back into the individual the original cell was taken from. This may help with some of the problems of rejection, etc. But it is in its infancy. We are just trying to find out all these things now..
I am not saying that this will be the route that is used if we get these stem cell therapies going, but we have to explore that avenue as well as taking stem cells from adults, stem cells from embryos and stem cells from fetuses, which is being done..
MBL: In looking at this overall, what would be the next step--forgetting cloning and the obvious research that is required there--but what would be the next burning step in research from this process? What would you like to see somebody pick up, or perhaps you pick up?.
KC: An understanding of cellular specialization and whether we can take a cell that is a liver cell and turn it into a brain cell, for instance. Whether we can cause cells to change their function.
If we can understand what causes them to take on specific functions and what holds them there, then the use of stem cells may be redundant. We could possibly just take some skin cells from someone, transfer them into a dish, change them into the cell type we are looking for, multiply them, and then transplant them back into the person they were taken from.
MBL: What do you find the most exciting about being a scientist?
KC: Science just fascinates me. What do I find most exciting about it? Obviously, when you make a breakthrough, it is very exciting. But I get very excited regularly about small results in the lab, which would mean nothing to lots of people. Just getting techniques working successfully, and getting good rates of development of embryos in dishes. Or being able to image a particular organelle within an embryo within a cell&that really excites me, just seeing the data, and the work done.
MBL: What turned you on to becoming a scientist? Why did you decide to do it?
KC: Well that is a difficult one. I don't know&I was always fascinated with biology from [childhood], I suppose. I could easily have become a vet or a medic along the way, but as it is, I ended up becoming a scientist. I don't know what caused me to become a scientist &but I was always fascinated by biol
MBL: What was your first experiment?
KC: Trying to make skulls from dead animals that I found & I also had a chemistry set and was always setting fire to the house and changing the color of things around the house. Much to my mother's upset, of course.
BM: I can imagine. What scientist would you most like to work with now, or in the past?.
MBL: I can imagine. What scientist would you most like to work with now, or in the past?.
KC: Because I am really fascinated by this area of cloning, some of the old biologists that were involved in trying to sort out these developmental processes.
MBL: Was that the 60's or 70's?
KC: That was in the 60's when John Gurdon reported the cloning of the frogs. He is still working in Cambridge now. He would be fascinating to work with&There are lots of incredible people around that would have been nice to work with, and some of the old developmental biologists that are long gone, from the 19th and 20th century..
MBL: What would be your greatest hope for the work that you have done?
KC: To see some benefits in terms of improving the quality of life for people. Now that is well on its way. Using transgenic animals and cloning just helps us produce more types of transgenic animals.
The first transgenic animals are being used to produce human pharmaceuticals. They were producing human proteins in the milk of cattle and sheep and using those to treat genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis or hemophilia. [These] would be great improvements in the quality of life for people. We are partly there.
Cloning offers a lot of benefits. I'd just like to see some of them put into practice. I hope that we manage to get there, and improve the quality of life for a lot more people. We are not going to cure diseases, but we may be able to treat them or hold them off or control and manage them.
MBL: Thank you very much, doctor..
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