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Seventeen years have passed since the milestone birth of Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell, which launched worldwide speculation as to whether humans were next. Scientists applied the technique in attempts to achieve human embryos, but were unsuccessful in reaching their central aim – obtaining embryonic stem cells for research – until May, when a research team in Oregon led by biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov announced it had accomplished the feat. Some scientists hailed the work as groundbreaking, opening a new route to the creation of patient-specific stem cells and unlocking the potential for new...

The idea would make headlines around the world and bring tears of joy to the planet's journalists. An adorable baby woolly mammoth, tottering on its newborn legs, is introduced to the media. Cloned from a few cells scraped from the permafrost of Siberia, the little creature provides the latest proof of the might of modern science and demonstrates the fact that extinction has at long last lost its sting. It is a fascinating prospect, one that was raised again last week when the most recently discovered carcass of a mammoth was revealed to the public in Yokohama, Japan. The female,...

<p>MOSCOW — Russian scientists claimed Wednesday they have discovered blood in the carcass of a woolly mammoth, adding that the rare find could boost their chances of cloning the prehistoric animal.</p> <p>An expedition led by Russian scientists earlier this month uncovered the well-preserved carcass of a female mammoth on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean.</p>

The second coming of Jesus Christ may be on the horizon — along with the third, fourth and fifth incarnations, depending on how quickly an artist's new "cloning tincture" catches on. Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats is giving everyone the chance to become the Christian messiah — and a number of other historical personages and celebrities as well — through his Epigenetic Cloning Agency, which opens a new branch at a Berlin gallery today (May 31).

AlfonZo Rachel thinks clones and the science of cloning is a lot like medical marijuana. Hear why as Zo brings you the facts about this scary new science, and the impact clones will have on the abortion and stem cell research debate.

The embryos killed are the first class of victims; the second class of victims will be the rest of us. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is the sort of timeless morality tale students read as an antidote, or at least an objection, to the hedonism that seems to follow naturally from youthful ideas about immortality. The story is familiar to many: Dorian Gray is a narcissist who wishes that a portrait of him — his copy in paint — would age in his place. His wish comes true, and though his life is corrupted by a pursuit of...

There has been a great deal of confusion and obfuscation surrounding the news this week that scientists have cloned human embryos for the first time. Embryonic stem-cell research advocates have been distorting basic facts about cloning for well over a decade. As Wesley J. Smith aptly notes, the basic biological distinction between cloning embryos and deriving stem cells from those embryos is perhaps the first thing that journalists and research advocates forget or conceal when discussing therapeutic cloning. What the Oregon cloning researchers reported this week was that they had cloned embryos and then destroyed those embryos to create...

Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley of Boston speaks at a press conference for the 2012 USCCB Fall General Assembly. Credit: Michelle Bauman/CNA. Boston, Mass., May 15, 2013 / 02:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley called the successful production of embryonic stem cells by cloning human embryos an “abuse” which ignores the dignity and value of the human person. “The news that researchers have developed a technique for human cloning is deeply troubling on many levels,” the archbishop of Boston, who chairs U.S. bishops' pro-life activities committee, said May 15. “Creating new human lives in the laboratory solely to...

They're usually thought of as a brutish, primitive species. So what woman would want to give birth to a Neanderthal baby? Yet this incredible scenario is the plan of one of the world’s leading geneticists, who is seeking a volunteer to help bring man’s long-extinct close relative back to life. Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago. His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer. He...

IMAGINE a football match pitting 11 clones of Wayne Rooney against 11 more clones of the same spud-faced Manchester United striker. Even avid Wayne-watchers might find it a bit dull. But polo fans may one day be treated to something similar. No one is proposing to clone the stallions who wield the mallets, of course. But the stallions they sit on are another matter. Outstanding polo horses are hard to find and horribly expensive. Each world-class rider may have dozens, the best of which may cost more than $200,000 each. So breeding great mounts is big business. It used to...

Last year on the 50th anniversary of the creation of the contraceptive pill its inventor Carl Djerassi spoke of the coming dramatic changes to reproductive options -- of the technologies that will have just as big an impact on society in the 50 years to come. After sex without reproduction, reproduction without sex. In an article in the UK's "traditional values" tabloid, the Daily Mail, titled "A Terrifying Future for Female Fertility," Djerassi said, "There are an enormous number of well-educated, proficient women who, when facing the biological clock, first pay attention to their professional ambitions...in the next 20...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, July 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - World famous opponent of South African apartheid, Nelson Mandela, celebrated his 89th birthday last Wednesday by announcing the formation of a Global council of elders, known simply as "The Elders."So far The Elders includes Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Mary Robinson, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Muhammad Yunus, Ela Bhatt, Graca Machel, and, of course, Nelson Mandela.  The group of high-profile international leaders is intended to be an independent body of "wise" men and women that will use their combined experience to solve any of the host of problems currently...

At the height of the great Embryonic Stem Cell Hype, Hwang Woo-suk fraudulently claimed to have created human cloned embryos and derived stem cells therefrom. He paid a price in reputation but not his freedom, despite obtaining research grants under false pretenses. Now, another Korean stem cell scientist stands accused of falsifying research reports. From the Korea Times story: A stem cell researcher at Seoul National University (SNU) is suspected of fabricating 14 studies submitted to international scientific journals for publication, the school said Monday. The misconduct of the researcher, if proven to be true, could deal a severe blow...

Today the newly emerged worldview of many scientists sets caution aside and moves into immediate use of the new molecular genetic techniques in food. Scientists who question this position are often seen by their peers as heretics.... in 2006, the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved milk and meat from cloned cattle, pigs and goats for the human food chain without labelling; • large biotechnology companies are already engaged in promoting transgenic livestock as a means of improving animals and their products for human consumption (Biotechnology Industry Organization, 2008);... the use of transgenic livestock in practical farming and in...

Four years hasn't been long enough to forget. Some supporters of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid, including Texans, remain bitter over how the last primary turned out, and they want their candidate back on the ballot this year, one way or another. Petitions are being circulated to encourage Clinton to resign as secretary of state and run for president; write-in efforts are under way to put her name at the top of the ballot. Some say they wouldn't mind if President Barack Obama did what has long been whispered: swap the jobs of Clinton and Joe Biden, making Clinton the...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday compared his war against reproductive rights and gay rights to the Civil Rights Movement, and attacked Newt Gingrich for putting social issues "in the back of the bus." "In terms of social issues [Gingrich] has been married three times, he has two divorces, he's admitted to infidelity," ABC's Christiane Amanpour noted during an interview with Santorum. "Should voters hold that against him?" "I think character is definitely an issue," Santorum opined. "I've been married 21 years, I have seven children. That's a factor that people are going to look at and should look...

Human embryonic stem cells. Credit: Nissim Benvenisty, Courtesy Public Library of Science (CC BY 2.5) Denver, Colo., Oct 8, 2011 / 06:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent experiment cloning human embryos for potential stem cell use did little to advance a medical breakthrough and violated human life, Catholic experts said in reaction to the news.“The attitudes of the scientists involved,” said Fr. Thomas Berg, head of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, show a “profound disrespect for the goods inherent to natural procreation and a demeaning of human life.”In an experiment publicized Oct. 5 in the...

A total of 60 Bulgarian citizens have now been arrested by police authorities across Europe for participating in a large international scheme for credit card forgery and other crimes.The gang has been active since nine years and has accumulated a fortune estimated at over EUR 50. Around 5000 police officers from Spain Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Germany, US intelligence agents and experts from Europol have contributed to the operation, codenamed Night Clone Card.The Bulgarian crime ring, which has been described as the world's largest in the sphere of bank card cloning, has been active mostly in Italy, where nine suspects were...

A genetics research group working in a lab in Kansas, has succeeded in creating a new species of lizard by mating two distinct species of North American Whiptails, both native to New Mexico. The offspring, all females are not only fertile, but can reproduce by laying eggs that don't need to be fertilized, which means, they actually clone themselves. Scientists have known for years that some species exist due to interspecies mating, the whiptail lizards have provided proof of that; they’ve been creating new species themselves for at least several hundred thousand years. What’s new is the process being manipulated...

In 1997, Barack Obama was a "Senior Lecturer" at the University of Chicago Law School. On December 13, 1997, Professor Obama administered a final exam to his law students... The first question: help a married couple clone their only daughter. The scene is set by then-Professor Obama thusly: Mary and Joseph are middle-aged parents. Their daughter, Dolly, was in a horrible car accident, after which she entered a "vegetative state." After discussing the issue, and faced with a "void," her parents have decided to clone her, even though the will that Dolly had left is vague about what she wanted...