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Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony
March 28, 2001, Wednesday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 760 words
COMMITTEE:
HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY OVERSIGNT OF
HUMAN CLONING RESEARCH
TESTIMONY-BY: DR RUDOLF JAENISHCH PH.D. , PROFESSOR OF
BIOLOGY MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTEOF TECHNOLOGY MEMBER
AFFILIATION: WHITEHEAD INSTITUTE
BODY: March 28, 2001 The House Committee On Energy
and Commerce W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, Chairman Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations Hearing Issues Raised by
Human Cloning Research
Dr. Rudolf Jaenishch Ph.D. Professor of Biology Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Member, Whitehead Institute Summary of Testimony Recently, cloning of
humans by nuclear transplantation has been proposed. In this testimony I will
focus on the scientific concerns about
human cloning that have
resulted from the experience with animal cloning. 1. To date, five mammalian
species (sheep, mice, goats, cows and pigs) have been cloned, however, survival
of the nuclear clones has been uniformly low. The great majority of all clones
(of all five species) die either at various stages of embryonic development, at
birth, or soon after birth. Most newborn clones are overweight and have an
increased and dysfunctional placenta. Those that survive the immediate perinatal
period may die within days or weeks after birth with defects such as kidney or
brain abnormalities, or with a defective immune system. Even apparently healthy
adult clones may have subtle defects that cannot be recognized in the animal. 2.
The most likely cause of abnormal clone development is faulty reprogramming of
the genome. This may lead to abnormal gene expression of any of the 30,000 genes
residing in the animal. 3. Faulty reprogramming does not lead to chromosomal or
genetic alterations of the genome, so methods that are used in routine prenatal
screening to detect chromosomal or genetic abnormalities in a fetus cannot
detect these reprogramming errors. There are no methods available now or in the
foreseeable future to assess whether the genome of a cloned embryo has been
correctly reprogrammed. 4. The experience with animal cloning allows us to
predict with a high degree of confidence that few cloned humans will survive to
birth and of those, the majority will be abnormal. The arguments given in this
outline have been summarized in more detail in an article by Jaenisch and Wilmut
that will be published in Science magazine on March 30, 2001. A copy of the
article will be available at the Committee meeting.
LOAD-DATE: March 30, 2001, Friday