British Scientists Create Embryo from Single Parent

For the first time in the UK, an embryo has been created from a single parent. In a press briefing at the British Association festival of science, Paul de Sousa, a researcher at the Roslin Institute which cloned Dolly the sheep, said that his team had created so-called parthenotes, which are early-stage embryos that are made from a single egg, without sperm, reported the Guardian newspaper.
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The move has further dismayed pro-life groups and Christian medical agencies, who believe that the modern advances in stem cell research are leading to a decline in ethical values.

Six parthenotes have been made so far by taking donated eggs from women that were going through sterilisation. An electric shock was given to the egg to make them divide. The intention was to harvest stem cells for the parthenotes, said Dr De Sousa, but the team had not been successful yet.

Embryonic cells are the master cells of the body that can turn into any tissue in the body. They can be harvested in the form of a ball of cells called balstocyst when the embryo is just a few days old.

Scientists say that they want to use the cells for research to develop treatments for many diseases, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

The human parthenotes would never be implanted into a womb, said Dr Sousa. This is outlawed by his research license.

Though researchers in the US have created human parthenotes before, they have proved successful in extracting stem cells.

This week has also seen the Human Fertilisation and Embryology uplift its ban on creating a human embryo with genetic input from three parents.

The move outraged pro-life supporters and Christian medical experts with some expressing that it amounted to using unborn babies as fodder for experiments.

The scientists plan to transfer the genetic make-up created from a fused egg and sperm into that of a second woman’s egg, thereby using three separate parents to create the final egg.

British Scientists have defended the works saying that it would carried out to investigate how to prevent various debilitating genetic diseases being passed onto a child from their mother. Such diseases, known as mitochondrial diseases, are brought about from the DNA found outside the nucleus, and so are inherited separately from the DNA found within the nucleus.

Although not technically cloning, the team promoting this project drive has been accused of using ‘cloning’ techniques.
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Campaign group, Life’s Matthew O’Gorman reported, “There is no satisfactory reason for using human beings as research material. Cloning techniques have been rejected by the vast majority of countries in the world as well as the European Union and the United Nations.”

However, researcher Professor John Burn told that technically the method used would not led to ‘designer babies’ as the embryo would be destroyed after just 14 days.

Burn said, “I would use the analogy of replacing the battery in a pocket radio to explain what we are doing. You are not altering the radio at all – just giving it a new power source.”

The man heading up the research team, Dr David Harrison has said to the BBC, "The innovative approach being tested by Professor Turnbull may lead to a treatment for mitochondrial myopathies, a group of conditions that dramatically affect quality and length of life."

Josephine Quintavalle from Comment on Reproductive Ethics told the BBC that she was horrified with the development, “This shows once again that the HFEA does not have any regard for public consultation and the views of the public. It is undesirable to create children in this way. It will shock the world. This is playing around with early human life.”

However, Professor Turnbull said they were not radically altering an embryo's DNA, but that “we are simply changing the energy source.”