The alarm provoked by the creation of Dolly, the first animal to be succesfully cloned from an adult cell, was spreading worldwide as her makers presented her to the media.
U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered an urgent inquiry into the ethics of cloning, France's farm minister conjured up horror movie visions of six-legged chickens and Nobel peace prize winner Joseph Rotblat compared the breakthrough with the creation of the atom bomb.
On hearing of the development, Clinton ordered the U.S. National Bioethics Advisory Panel to report within 90 days on the legal and ethical ramifications of cloning, especially its implications for humans.
White House spokesman Mike McCurry called it a very troubling subject while a poll highlighted the level of anxiety in the United States.
The poll showed 87 percent believed cloning of humans should be banned, although six percent of the 519 adults questioned said they would like to be cloned themselves.
Ian Wilmut, who headed the team that created Dolly said he was untroubled by nightmares and that, anyway, genetic science was nowhere near reproducing humans.
We have made it clear -- we can't see a clinical reason why you would do it, Wilmut told reporters who came to see Dolly at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh where she was created.
I do believe we are a pretty moral species. The thing is, there are enormous potential benefits...Nuclear weapons are much more dangerous than this, Wilmut said.
Rotblat, the nuclear physicist who won the 1995 Nobel prize for his campaign against the atom bomb he helped create, was not convinced.
My worry is that other advances in human science may lead to other means of mass destruction more readily available than nuclear weapons. Genetic engineering is quite a possible area because of its frightful potentiality, Rotblat told BBC radio.
Rotblat urged the creation of ethical committees which could put a stop to scientific projects that could threaten humankind.
However unpleasant it may be for scientists that science may have to be somehow controlled...I would like to see the setting up of an international ethical committee, said Rotblat.
French Farm Minister Philippe Vasseur speculated that the development might one day spawn the science needed to make farmyard freaks.
Even if countries like France, Italy, Spain, Germany and others have rigorous rules about using science, what you can and cannot do, tomorrow someone could well invent sheep with eight feet or chickens with six legs, Vasseur said.
France would ban imports of anything it thought against the public interest. Germany's Science and Research Minister Juergen Ruettgers said scientists must never be allowed to make a human clone.
I say that there will never a cloned human being, and that can never be allowed...each and every human being is a unique creation that cannot be manipulated with, Ruettgers said.
Research does not happen in no-man's land, where there are no ethics. It is necessary to examine possible risks and to rule out unresponsible risks.
Dolly herself proved to have the requisite four legs, single head and woolly coat. She will never be sold or eaten and, because she is so valuable, will never be let out of her shed to graze.
Source: Newswire
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