Animal cloning may be best used in production of medicine

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the brightest future for animal cloning may be in the lucrative industry of medicine, not food production. Rick Barrett writes that cloning animals to create living drug factories could lower the cost of medicine used to save lives.

The possibilites include cows that produce pharmaceutical proteins and antibodies in their milk and blood; chickens that lay drug-producing eggs; and pigs that grow human-ready organs. Cloned animals could also speed up the drug-making process. Currently, a Massachusetts biotech firm is using genetically engineered dairy goats to make a human protein that prevents blood clots from forming. GTC Biotherapeutics extracts the protein from the goats' milk for a drug that helps prevent strokes, pulmonary embolisms and other life-threatening conditions. (Illustration from futurethinktank.com)

But some do not share the optimism. George Kimbrell, an attorney with the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group focused on food issues, told Barrett that he feared cloned animals could get into the general population and cause problems. "What we have learned from the genetic engineering of crops is that nature finds a way" to reproduce, said Barrett. Genetic engineering also raises questions about animal cruelty. A government-owned company in New Zealand created four cloned calves intended to produce a hormone for treating infertility. Three of the calves developed huge ovaries and two of them died unexpectedly. (Read more)