Tom Matthews wrote:
> Check out our Website (www.lef.org) for the inside scoop on the aging
> reversal breakthrough that was featured on CNN last night and is being
> reported on in most newspapers today (April 28, 2000).
Tom, I just can't believe you wrote that. You know perfectly well that
it isn't even "cell aging-reversal therapy". It's a way of cloning
cows such that they have longer telomeres than normal cows of the same
age. It's also, potentially, a way of synthesising cells and organs in
vitro which could be transplanted without inducing immune rejection,
something which, potentially, has great therapeutic value, but which is
not brought any closer by the research published in the Science article
that started this story -- West says in the LEF interview, for example,
"I think the earliest clinical trials of human cells made by human
therapeutic cloning are likely 5-10 years from now at the earliest."
West has made it very clear in all the interviews I've read so far
(including the LEF one) that we have no idea whether these cloned cows
will live longer than normal. Only Lanza, the first author, has been
making any irresponsible statements.
This is very valuable work, whose reputation is only tarnished by such
distorted descriptions of it.
Aubrey de Grey
