Cloned Sheep Dolly Develops Arthritis 

REUTERS 4jan02

LONDON  - Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, has developed arthritis, raising fears that the cloning process may have given her a genetic defect.

Professor Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Scotland said Friday that Dolly, the first mammal cloned from a cell taken from an adult animal, had arthritis in her left hind leg.

Arthritis is not unknown in sheep but Dolly, born in 1996, has developed it at an unusually young age, suggesting it may be the result of a genetic defect, possibly caused by cloning.

"The fact that Dolly has arthritis at this comparatively young age suggests that there may be problems," Wilmut told BBC radio.

Cloning is a hot area of medical research. Rival teams this week announced the birth of cloned, genetically engineered pigs that may be suitable for animal-to-human transplants.

Wilmut said it was too early to draw conclusions from Dolly's case, and he urged biotech companies and research laboratories to share information about the health of their cloned animals to see if there was a common thread.

"We know already there is an unusual incidence of death in cloned animals around the time of birth. What we need to go on studying is whether diseases like arthritis, which tend to be associated with older age, occur in a normal way or whether the incidence is changed," he said.

Researchers at PPL Therapeutics Plc, which helped to produce Dolly, and a U.S. joint venture company set up by Novartis AG and BioTransplant Inc have both recently cloned pigs whose organs may be compatible with humans.

Pig kidneys, hearts and other organs could help solve a dire shortage of donated human tissue -- and create a multi-billion dollar market for successful companies.

Some scientists think it is inevitable that human cloning will also become a reality one day, whether it is reproductive cloning to enable the infertile to become parents or therapeutic cloning to create embryos that can be used as a source of stem cells.

Dan Lyons, of the animal protection group CAGE

Excerpted From Cloned sheep Dolly has arthritis BBC News 4jan02

Dan Lyons, of the animal protection group CAGE, told the programme that this process could never be perfected.

"Biology is not like Lego, it's not like Meccano, you can't just interfere with one aspect of an animal's system and expect the rest of the system to continue to function perfectly."

The animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming has also called for a halt to cloning.

Its director, Joyce D'Silva, told BBC Radio 5 Live: "I think of the hundreds and hundreds of other cloned lambs who have been born and had malformed hearts, lungs or kidneys.

"They have struggled to survive for a few days and then had their lungs filled with fluid and gasped their way to death or had to be put our of their misery by their creators.

"That is the real story of cloning."

It is unusual but not unknown for a five and a half year old sheep to develop arthritis.

This has raised the question of whether the cloning process led to Dolly's problem and whether cloning always gives rise to unhealthy animals.

Many cloning companies have reported that their animals are healthy.

But there has been no independent assessment of the long term health of cloned animals.

And there is anecdotal evidence of animals being born overweight, malformed and with damaged immune systems.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1741000/1741559.stm 6jan02

Joyce D'Silva, Director Compassion in World Farming

Excerpted From Head-to-head: Cloning BBC News 4jan02

I'm glad Dolly has survived so well for so long and sorry to hear she's developed arthritis. When I think of cloned animals, I don't think of Dolly, I see in my mind's eye all the hundreds of newly-born cloned lambs who struggle to survive for just a few days before their malformed organs give up on them and they die.

Or I see the thousands of female sheep, who have been operated on to have egg cells removed and then been killed and the thousands who have had cloned embryos inserted surgically, only frequently to abort them later or else face giving birth to abnormally large lambs, because clones usually grow excessively big in the uterus.

Dolly raises the question of the long-term ill effects of cloning on farm animals.

We don't yet know the answer to that one, but what we do know is that there's virtually a 50% mortality rate for cloned farm animals.

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) asks what on earth are we doing funding research which is so ineffective and causes so much suffering?

As for using the organs of cloned and genetically modified animals for transplant into humans - there are all sorts of appalling risks to do with transfer of animal viruses to humans.

CIWF is calling for a global moratorium on all experimental and commercial use of GM or cloned farm animals.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1742000/1742455.stm 6dec01