High Rate of Clone Failures

The West Australian newspaper
15th November 2002 Auckland (New Zealand)

Nearly one in four calves and lambs cloned at a New Zealand government research station had died from deformities within three months of birth, it was reported yesterday.

AgResearch at Hamilton, south of Auckland, said it destroyed some calves before birth and slaughtered others that served as surrogate mothers when foetuses grew too big to be born naturally, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Cloning program leader David Wells said errors in the pattern of gene expression had produced some animals with deformities that made them not viable at birth.

He said the death rate of cloned calves between birth and weaning was 24 per cent , compared with about five per cent in normal calves. The findings, which echo those of other laboratories, cast more doubt on the claim of Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori that he was on the verge of cloning a human.

But Dr Antinori has dismissed concerns about deformities, claiming it was a certainty that problems seen in other cloned animals would not occur in human beings.