Researchers in China create the first healthy, cloned rhesus monkey
Their new technique could make the routine cloning of primates easier
PRIMATES RESIST cloning. For some, that is a blessing, since it postpones the awkward day when somebody proposes cloning people. For others it is a problem. Medical researchers would find the genetic standardisation which cloning brings useful, especially if it could be applied to the two species of monkey—crab-eating and rhesus macaques—that are the mainstay of non-human-primate research. And if monkeys with clinically interesting genetic modifications could be mass-produced, it would be even better.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Mass production?”
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